


Fleet of the Homeward Bound

by Sora2455



Category: Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica (2003), Mass Effect Trilogy, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Wars - All Media Types, Warhammer 40.000, 宇宙戦艦ヤマト2199 | Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (Anime)
Genre: Cross-posted on SpaceBattles, Gen, Shipgirls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:08:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28018266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sora2455/pseuds/Sora2455
Summary: Enterprise, Babylon 5, Yamato, Normandy and Galactica just want to know where they are and how to get home. Also, they want to know why they're all girls in space now.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 16





	1. Down the rabbit hole

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally posted on Spacebattles (https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fleet-of-the-homeward-bound.896133).

When Enterprise gained consciousness, she was spinning through space out of control.

“Ack! Woah woah woah!” She shouted, pinwheeling her arms ~~_firing her manoeuvring thrusters_~~ to steady her movement. “I know it’s delta shift, but that’s no excuse for being asleep at the wheel!”

She waited for a moment, fully expecting her helm officer to stammer out an apology, but nothing came.

She blinked in surprise, looking around herself ~~_performing an active sensor sweep_~~. Despite stabilising her path, she was flying through space at near transwarp speeds (about 3000 times the speed of light in concrete terms), caught in some kind of subspace rip-tide.

“Um,” The starship looked up, seeing the light of the nearest star get dimmer and dimmer as she zoomed away from it. “Captain? Orders?”

She could feel the gnawing worry in her gut that characterised Yellow Alert, so even if her Acting Captain was missing in action her actual Captain should be waking up and taking control any second now.

“…any second now…” Enterprise bit her bottom lip, wincing as she had to clench her gut ~~_flare her structural integrity field_~~ to hold together though a moment of subspace turbulence.

...well, surely her captain wouldn’t mind a bit of initiative on her part? Just this once?

Feeling like she was breaking some fundamental taboo, Enterprise took the waveform of the subspace current, calculated the inverse, fired up her warp drive and broke out of the current and fully returned to normal space. She emerged into the dark space between solar systems, about 2 light-years from the star she had been watching before.

“Computer?” Enterprise asked hesitantly.

Her computer gave a chirp to let her know it was listening.

“Where are we?”

“Unknown.” The ever-polite voice of her computer spoke in her head.

Enterprise blinked. “Unknown?”

There was silence for a moment, then Enterprise realised she hadn’t actually asked the computer a question. “Computer, clarify last statement?”

“I am not receiving any signal from any known navigation beacons, and visible stars do not match any in current star charts.” Her computer elaborated.

Enterprise’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, so it’s going to be one of _those_ missions.” She groaned. She was either in another galaxy, another time period, or another dimension. _Again._

She looked down at herself, brushing some space dust off her saucer-skirt. An itch in her nacelle-wings caused her to shoot a nervous glance behind herself, but the two softly glowing protrusions looked perfectly intact to her eyes.

Her captain still hadn’t given any orders.

“Computer, do you know what the captain is doing?” Enterprise asked, starting to twiddle her thumbs.

“Captain Picard is asleep in his quarters.”

That was very strange. He should have been woken by now – either by the Yellow Alert, or by a crew member sent to fetch him. “And the acting captain?”

“Captain Picard is asleep in his quarters.”

Enterprise froze. “Computer, who’s the highest-ranking crew member still awake?”

“All crew members are currently asleep in their quarters.”

“…including Data?”

“Confirmed, Lieutenant Commander Data is asleep in his quarters.”

Before Enterprise could go further down this rabbit hole, she felt a burst of tachyons right at the edge of her awareness ~~_long-range sensors_~~. She looked up at their source, and found herself staring at the solar system the subspace current had been carrying her out of. “What was that?”

“Energy signature shows a 12% similarity with Xindi subspace vortex technology.” Her computer helpfully supplied.

12% wasn’t much to go on, but she had to have gotten here _somehow_ , and if there was something nearby that even _vaguely_ looked like a wormhole…

Knowing that red-lining her engines was a terrible idea when she had so little information, but wanting to not waste a moment, Enterprise plotted a course at Warp 9. ETA: 11 hours 16 minutes.

Enterprise manoeuvred herself around so that she was facing the direction she wanted to go, and engaged her warp drive. Her nacelle-wings began to glow brightly as they powered up, and Enterprise could hear the _zoom-whoosh_ of a warp bubble settling into place. To an outside observer, it would look like Enterprise had stretched off to infinity, but that was just an optical illusion caused by the spacial distortion.

As a starship, journeys this short were very rare – most voyages that she set out on took days if not weeks to complete. However, those previous times have been with a conscious crew. While the stars sped past her, she had listened to the sounds of her engineers running about with checklists and tricorders, off-duty crewman laughing in Ten Forward, children scurrying under their parents feet.

For the first time she could remember, Enterprise was truly left alone with her thoughts, and she didn’t like it one bit.

Still, she was a Starfleet ship, darn it! She wasn’t going to fall apart at the sort of thing her crew dealt with every second week!

That said, she wished the computer was better company. As the ship, she was technically lowest on the chain of command, and didn’t even have the authority to activate the EMH. Which was a problem twice over, because her crew really needed medical attention. There was _no_ reason for the entire crew to be unconscious at once – even that one time the Paxans had knocked her crew out, Data had remained active.

Still, 11 hours eventually passed, and she dropped out of warp about 30 light-minutes or so “above” the plane of the ecliptic and took a good hard look ~~_ran a full scan with passive sensors only_~~. It was unusually timid of her, but who could blame her with her crew disabled?

Whatever she had been expecting, this wasn’t it. It was plain, rather boring system. Main-sequence G2 star much like Sol, but only one planet and it was orbiting way too far from the star to support any form of life short of a Horta. There was an unusually thick asteroid belt much closer to the star, but no signs of life there either.

Wait, no – there was something there, right on the edge of her senses ~~_effective sensor range_~~. A stream of high-energy exotic particles in orbit around the planet.

Enterprise tapped her combadge ~~_powered up her comm array_~~ and transmitted “This is the USS Enterprise to unknown entity or entities. If you can receive and understand this message, please respond.” on every frequency and in every language she knew. She smiled, proud of how professional she’d sounded.

That smile became strained after 10 minutes with no response.

She bit her lip in worry, but engaged her warp drive nonetheless.

After another few minutes of low warp travel, she dropped down into impulse. Her eyes ~~_optical sensors_~~ were now picking up a structure next to the source of exotic particles – a station that strongly reminded her of the theoretical “O'Neill cylinder” design from pre-warp Earth.

The station had an earthy, blue grey and silver dress on, and a large structure running up her back that to Enterprise’s eyes ~~sensors~~ appeared to be a cargo bay. Her attention was focused fully on four long booms that looked like a half-finished spacedock. They were each giving off high-energy readings, and a swarm of fighter-fairies was flying around them in panicked circles, but what was more interesting to Enterprise’s eyes ~~sensors~~ was the dimensional breach they appeared to be containing.

If that wasn’t the anomaly she had picked up from 2 light-years away Enterprise would replicate herself a hat to eat.

Enterprise couldn’t sense anything more advanced than a fusion reactor in the station as she dropped out of impulse, but raised her shields nonetheless – the station was over 8,000 meters long to her 642 and a half, meaning she only came up to her ankles. “Hello?” She broadcast, this time on basic radio.

“Oh!” The station jerked backwards in surprise, the swarm of fighter-fairies scattering in all directions. The station turned to look at Enterprise, giving an apologetic smile. “Sorry dear, you startled me. I’m afraid I must have missed your jump point.”

“Sorry.” Enterprise winced, though internally a little surprised. She hadn’t been making any real attempt to mask her warp signature, and why was her Universal Translator using such unusual terminology as ‘jump point’? “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s alright.” The station accepted. “I suppose I was rather distracted by this, anyhow.” She gestured to the anomaly.

Enterprise turned to face the distortion, peering closely at it ~~_initiating an active scan_~~. “Do you know what this is?”

The station laughed. “I’m afraid I haven’t a clue!” She admitted. “It just appeared in my space with no warning, and started fluctuating rather badly. My commander tried to stabilise it using the jumpgate, and, well…” She gestured to the booms around the anomaly. “The whole thing turned inside-out on us. Swallowed me whole – I barely had time to eject my docked ships, no time to properly evacuate. Next thing I know, I woke up here.”

The two of them studied the anomaly in silence for a moment. It was a harsh, jagged thing, alternating between red and blue as the types of high-energy exotic particles it was emitting changed at random. Cherenkov radiation, Hawking radiation, a burst of tachyons, Cherenkov again, vetron radiation of all things… there was no pattern that Enterprise could see, and a few forms of radiation that she’d never seen before.

“I’m sorry, how rude of me.” The station suddenly said, prompting Enterprise to look up at her. “My name is Babylon 5.”

Enterprise smiled. “I’m the USS Enterprise-D.” She declared.

“Nice to meet you, Enterprise-D.”

“Call me Enterprise!” Enterprise smiled. “None of my family are around to confuse things.”

“Alright, though nobody’s ever really called me anything other than Babylon 5…” Babylon 5 smiled back, hands clasped together.

The radiation from the dimensional breach suddenly spiked, and both station and ship turned back to it, all business now. Some of the swarm of fighter-fairies bravely clamped onto the “jumpgate” struts, thrusters firing full force trying to hold them in place as the breach started to push them apart.

“It’s opening again!” Babylon 5 warned. Not a second later, a high-mass object was suddenly ejected from the anomaly at about 3 times the speed of light, fast enough that Enterprise would have missed it if she hadn’t been deep-scanning the anomaly at the time. With it came a _massive_ burst of high-energy radiation. Fortunately both were aimed away from Enterprise and Babylon 5, otherwise the both of them would have been vaporised, shields and all. The radiation crashed into the asteroid belt, and whatever it touched was super-heated to the point that they _exploded_.

The alien technology in the jumpgate powered up further, and the breach seemed to recede into itself a little. Enterprise suddenly had the mental image of someone pinching shut a hose as water pressure built up behind it.

Sure enough, Babylon 5 yelled “I won’t be able to hold it for much longer – it’s getting harder and harder to keep it closed!”

Enterprise hurriedly fed her scan data into her PADD ~~_main computer_~~. “Have you tried applying the inverse waveform over it?” She double-checked that the anomaly had no chroniton radiation – she didn’t want to be responsible for creating the anomaly she was trying to close.

“Yes dear, of course! It spiked like this about 17 hours ago, and that seemed to calm it down for a while, but it’s not responding now!”

2 light-years, divided by 3000 _c_ , plus the 11.25 hours it had taken her to warp here… “That was probably me, entering though here!” Enterprise yelled. “I must have passed through it while at warp, that’s probably how I got caught in that current…”

“What?” Babylon 5 sounded confused. “But… ugh, nevermind! That won’t matter unless we can put a lid on this thing!” She said, her voice becoming rather shrill towards the end of that sentence as she stared at the breach in horror.

The breach _pulsed_ , and another object flew out of it at warp speeds. This time it and it’s accompanying radiation were aimed only _mostly_ away from Enterprise and Babylon 5, and Enterprise realised that the breach was _rotating_.

“Look out!” She cried out, realising right afterwards that the cry was useless – a station wouldn’t be able to move on its own. A holographic warning display that just-so-happened to resemble a magic circle appeared around one hand as she latched onto Babylon 5 with a tractor beam. The station out-massed her more than a thousand times over, but she tugged as hard as she could, trying desperately to pull the station out of the path of the spinning breach.

“What on Earth?!” The station cried, staring at her tractor beam like she’d never seen one before. (She had heard of the magnetic/gravitational tethers that Minbari ships were capable of, but those looked different enough that she didn’t make the connection.) After a moment though, she seemed to catch on. She made swimming motions ~~fired her orbit maintenance thrusters~~ , adding what little she could to Enterprise’s efforts.

The breach pulsed again, shooting another object out. This time the accompanying radiation vaporised an unfortunate fighter-fairy that had been in it’s path.

“Come on, come on…!” Enterprise grit her teeth, pulling with all her might ~~_directing emergency power to the tractor beam_~~. Out here in orbit, they weren’t fighting gravity or friction, just inertia. Any amount of force would move the station, the only question was could she move it _enough_. “Just a little more…!”

The breach pulsed one more time, and Babylon 5 had to stifle a scream as the radiation clipped the tip of her cargo hold, vaporising the opening and super-heating the adjacent metal. The radiation and object shot from the breach continued on past the station to impact the planet, hitting with enough force to send visible shock-waves through the crust. Enterprise desperately hoped that her estimate of the planet as uninhabitable was right, as she watched the surface break apart to reveal the magma underneath.

Her efforts paid off, however, and the next pulse missed Babylon 5 even as it shattered the planet below them.

“It’s accelerating!” Babylon 5 cried, staring at the breach as Enterprise released her tractor beam. (She would stabilise the station’s orbit later if they survived). Enterprise spun around to see that the station was right, the pulses were getting more and more frequent and the breach was spinning faster and faster. The struts were now filled up with fighter-fairies, thrusters at full burn, and Enterprise released her own runabout-pixies to aid them.

(Fortunately, the breach’s spin appeared to keep it pointed between the struts. Enterprise didn’t want to think about what would happen if they lost one of them.)

Realising that she didn’t have time to make a full computer model of the breach, Enterprise did some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations. The “jumpgate” did appear to be able to close dimensional breaches, it was just that whatever realm it was connected to was “under pressure”, and a constant stream of matter and energy was flowing out of the breach and keeping it open. A properly-calibrated burst of tetryon particles should weaken the connection and lessen the stream enough for Babylon 5 to fully close it, but to do that they’d have to drain the “pressure” currently in the rift itself –

Realisation hit Enterprise like an asteroid to the face. “We need to open the breach!”

“Run that by me again, dear?!” Babylon 5 cried, ducking down as another faster-than-light projectile whizzed over her head ~~_docking bay_~~. The breach was now sending out pulses once every couple of seconds, and was still accelerating.

“It’s like water pressure in a fire hose!” Enterprise yelled. “We have to let the pressure out before we can properly close it!”

“For both our sakes, I hope you’re right!” Babylon 5 responded, sending command signals to the jumpgate with a wave of her hand. The breach suddenly tripled in diameter, with the fighter-fairies and runabout-pixies needing to pull the struts back so that they weren’t caught up in the turbulence.

Several very large, very _fast_ objects burst out of the breach in quick succession, the radiation accompanying them near-constant now. Her hands ~~_deflector dish_~~ glowed as Enterprise desperately gathered energy in them ~~_it_~~ , watching with worry as the local star was hit with several of the bursts. If the star destabilised and went supernova, that was game over.

When she had gathered enough, she thrust her hands forward and fired her charged pulse of tetryon particles down the throat of the breach, and saw in relief as, just for a moment, it seemed to weaken and shrink.

“Now!” Enterprise yelled. “Close it!”

Babylon 5 grit her teeth, but clamped her hands together, sending the appropriate commands. The breach flickered for a moment, and Enterprise held her ~~_metaphorical_~~ breath…

Then the breach collapsed in on itself, becoming a singular point of light. Almost no radiation leaked from it now.

The ship and station both waited a moment, but when nothing happened they both let out relieved sighs, Enterprise dropping her shields.

“Let’s not do that again.” Babylon 5 requested wearily.

“Yeah.” Enterprise agreed, moving around to the other side of the station and latching on with another tractor beam to drag her back to a stable orbit. “But no worries! You did an awesome job closing it! That’s more a scar on the fabric of space-time than a proper breach anymore.”

“A jumpgate is supposed to close jump-points up specifically to _avoid_ scarring like that, though.” Babylon 5 replied, several of her fighter-fairies flying over to her melted docking bay and poking it with manipulator arms.

“Well, look on the bright side.” Enterprise said, finishing her duties as a tug-boat. “This gives us a reference point when trying to figure out how to return home.”

Babylon 5 made a “Hmm” noise, staring at the remains of the breach.

Enterprise smiled awkwardly, but the station didn’t say anything.

After a minute of silence, Enterprise had had enough. “I’m going to do a quick flyby and scan of the planet and star, make sure both are stable.”

Babylon 5 gave a quick nod to show that she’d heard, then went back to staring at the ex-breach.

The crust of the planet the pair was orbiting had been shattered by the force of the objects ejected from the dimensional breach, but not quite energetically enough to disperse it. Most of the chunks were gravitationally pulling each other closer, the planet pulling itself back together. Only some of the smaller debris had reached escape velocity, and a good chunk of even that was now settling into orbits. In a few hundred or thousand years this debris would likely form into rings around the planet. Enterprise made sure to note the paths of as much of it as she could, making sure none of it would collide with Babylon 5 for the foreseeable future.

 _The good news_ , Enterprise thought to herself as she weaved through the debris, _is that I’m pretty sure I was right – this planet was uninhabited._

It wasn’t _strictly_ their fault that the anomaly had shattered the planet, but she’d still feel terrible if people had lost their homes – or worse, died – because she couldn’t seal the breach fast enough.

Enterprise finished up her flyby, and was getting ready to check the local star next when she noticed a high-energy signature at the edge of her awareness ~~_passive sensor range_~~.

Excitement fluttering in her chest, Enterprise immediately set off at Full Impulse, broadcasting on both subspace and radio frequencies. “This is the USS Enterprise to unknown entity or entities. If you can receive and understand this message, please respond.”

She was planning to repeat the message in all other languages she knew, as she did for Babylon 5 earlier, but to her surprise immediately got a response in English, albeit with a noticeable accent. “I am Yamato BBY-01. I understand your message, Enterprise-san.”

Enterprise had had a sister ship called the Yamato. Even though she had been destroyed by an Iconian computer virus, Enterprise found growing excited at meeting another starship with that name.

Once she was close enough to get a proper look at the other ship, Enterprise slowed to a stop, blinking in surprise ~~_repeating her scan_~~. Yamato’s design was very much… well, not what she would have expected from a spaceship. Frankly, it looked like someone had started with an old ocean-going warship and given her rocket-wings ~~_slapped a giant thruster on the end_~~.

The other ship was a little over half Enterprise’s height ~~_length_~~ , had long brown hair, and was wearing a white shirt and red skirt. That was fine, but what wasn’t was all of the scars – some faded, some fresh – that cross-crossed their way across her exposed skin, and almost certainly under her clothes as well. This was a ship that had seen too much action, then been patched up and sent back out.

Enterprise had her own share of repair marks as well, but hers were the faint, clean lines of spacedock repairs. Yamato’s were the rough lines of field repairs – a _lot_ of field repairs. Enterprise wouldn’t be surprised if this ship had had to be reassembled from debris at one point, that’s how extensive the repair marks were.

But looking into the other ship’s steely, cool gaze, Enterprise knew that this ship wouldn’t hesitate to jump back into action one more time.

Feeling slightly intimidated now, Enterprise bowed her head, guessing correctly that this ship would respect the traditional greeting. “I don’t suppose you’re native to this area of space?”

“I am not.” Yamato replied, politely bowing her head in return. “There appears to have been some kind of dimensional interference in my last warp jump – judging from your question, something similar happened to you?”

“Yeah.” It was inappropriate, but Enterprise found herself smiling at the familiar terminology. “There was a dimensional breach on the other side of this planet – a station named Babylon 5 and myself managed to close it up – that’s probably what brought all of us here.”

Yamato frowned. “Is it not quite foolish to close what would logically be the door back to our own space?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t want to try to go back through that one.” Enterprise quickly explained. “It was full of hard radiation going the other way – even with with full shields I don’t think I could make it.” And that was assuming the particle flow didn’t just force her back out of it, like a human trying to swim up a waterfall.

Yamato slowly nodded, processing this information.

“Another ship with a warp drive and some understanding of dimensional mechanics would be of great help getting us home.” Enterprise offered eagerly, hoping she sounded professional. “Want to go over and pool our resources?”

Yamato nodded. “Please.”

Enterprise happily set off at Quarter Impulse, looking behind herself to make sure Yamato was following… and found herself frowning.

Yamato’s rocket-wings ~~_main thruster_~~ were roaring as they fired, leaving a large yellow trail behind the ship. Rather than simple chemical rockets, Yamato’s thrusters appeared to fire tachyons and other exotic particles. Any observer would be filled with the sense of something slowly building up to enormous power.

…the key word there being ‘slowly’.

“By any chance,” Yamato said dryly, having been left in the dust accelerating at a steady 3 Gs to Enterprise’s relativistic manoeuvring “are you unmanned? If I accelerated like that, I’m not sure even Analyser would survive the G-force, and he is a robot.”

Apparently, whoever built Yamato had known how to build a warp drive but not inertial dampeners. Enterprise could sense artificial gravity on the other ship, a technology she had thought was synonymous with inertial dampeners but apparently not.

“It’s… complicated?” She avoided Yamato’s question as she slowed to a halt, suddenly unsure if she should be discussing technology the other ship seemed to lack. “Um, how about we just travel the remaining distance at warp?”

Yamato shook her head. “If it is just to the other side of the planet, I will just travel the remaining distance like this. You have hyperspace communications, yes?”

Enterprise blinked. She opened her mouth to ask Yamato what she meant, before being interrupted by a subspace hail. The frequency was unusual, and her Universal Translator took a moment to decode the unfamiliar transmission protocol, but afterwards she was connected to what was easily recognisable as a subspace comm channel.

“We shall keep in touch like this.” Yamato transmitted, confirming that it was her who opened the channel. Apparently, Yamato’s builders called subspace “hyperspace”.

“Alright.” Enterprise sent back, still a little unsure herself. “See you there.”

Jumping up to Half Impulse, Enterprise decided to cut her flyby short and head back to Babylon 5 to let her know what had occurred.

The station had failed to reply to her subspace hails earlier, responding only to her radio hail, so Enterprise had made the understandable but still mistaken assumption that the station lacked FTL comms altogether. Lost in her thoughts, she completely missed the pulses of tachyons the station was transmitting at her and was quite surprised at what she found when she dropped out of impulse.

“There you are, dear.” Babylon 5 chastised her. “Honestly, when someone hails you could you please do them the courtesy of answering?”

Enterprise blinked rapidly, trying to figure out what the station was talking about. “Um, sorry?” Her eyes flicked over to the two new ships who had matched their orbits to the station. “On the other side of the planet I, um, found another ship… as did you, I see.”

“Indeed.” Babylon 5 indicated the two new ships. “Enterprise, this is the SSV Normandy SR-2 and Battlestar Galactica BS-75. Normandy, Galactica, this is the USS Enterprise-D.”

The Normandy was a tiny slip of a ship – barely 170 meters by Enterprise’s eye, about level with her knees – all sleek lines and flowing curves. (Though not curves in the way that a human woman would have them – Normandy looked like a frigate, or a girl in her tween years if she’d been human). Her design was at least partially human, going by the fact that her name was written on her bodysuit in English – but there was a very strong alien influence going by the reptilian features of her face and the scales on her cheeks and the back of her hands. (They might have been in other places as well, but Enterprise was hardly going to ask her to remove her bodysuit so she could check.)

Galactica, on the other hand, was a huge ship more than twice the height ~~_length_~~ of Enterprise, decked out in thick armour made of an alloy Enterprise didn’t immediately recognise, but those were about the only impressive things about her. Her design, like that of Babylon 5’s and Yamato’s, was purely human (at least on the surface). And… Enterprise didn’t want to be rude, but given the other ship’s minimal radiation signature and her exhaust trail Enterprise was pretty sure that Galactica was powered by a _chemical_ reactor, which would give her less power to work with than even the fusion-powered Normandy, a ship less than an eighth of her height ~~_length_~~.

“Hello, Cloud Nine.” Galactica said randomly. Her eyes were focused on Enterprise, but she seemed to be looking through her, not at her. “I’m sorry you had to wait so long for me to join you.”

Thrown for a loop, Enterprise hesitated for a moment on how to respond. Behind Galactica, Babylon 5 just shrugged helplessly. “Um, actually, my name is Enterprise-D.”

“Oh, is that what you’re calling yourself these days?” Galactica asked, grey hair framing a wrinkled face. “Still, you’ll always be Cloud Nine to me.”

This ship was _old_ , Enterprise realised, and probably should have been retired some time ago. This opinion only grew stronger when she noticed hairline cracks all over Galactica’s skin ~~_hull_~~ , and a several large fractures down her spine ~~_keel_~~. Forget being retired, Enterprise wanted to know how Galactica was still _spaceworthy_.

“You can understand her?” Babylon 5 asked Enterprise. “It sounds vaguely Greek to me, but only just.”

“I’m equipped with a Universal Translator.” Enterprise explained on reflex, remembering her earlier decision to keep quiet about tech she had but others didn’t just a second too late.

“Your people have met Galactica’s people before?”

“Hm? No, I don’t think so…”

“You have a real-time translator that works on languages that you haven’t encountered before?” Babylon 5 asked, slightly incredulously. “Is it telepathic?”

“…no?” Enterprise said, unconvincingly. Technically it wasn’t, but it did scan the brain of the person talking so that it could tell homophones apart and so on. There was a limit to what could be told from context, especially in First Contacts.

“Wait.” Enterprise blinked. “If you couldn’t understand her, then how did you know –”

Interrupted by a slight tug on her saucer-skirt, Enterprise looked down to find Normandy looking up at her.

“Transfer.” The frigate asked quietly, holding a hand out.

“…you want my translation files?” Enterprise tried to clarify, wondering if this is how humans felt when small children asked them for candy.

Normandy nodded, staring intently up at Enterprise.

“Um, I’ll need an example of how you store translations…”

Normandy lifted her right arm up, and an orange hologram of a keyboard and screen formed over it. With her left, she typed several quick commands, and Enterprise’s PADD beeped in her pocket to signal an incoming data transfer ~~_sensors detected a communications laser being shone at her_~~.

It took her Universal Translator a couple of seconds to chew through the unfamiliar file format. It was (likely deliberately) simple enough to understand – information was stored in groups of 8 digit base 2 numbers, little endian… it used the old Unicode encoding, was written in English, and appeared to be a variant on XML.

There was another file mixed in, but didn’t seem to contain any useful information when Enterprise ran it. It must have been a metadata file or something – Enterprise would worry about it later.

Quickly tapping a command on her own PADD ~~_queuing a task on her computer_~~ , Enterprise rewrote the translation mappings that her Universal Translator had worked out into the format Normandy used and sent it back over. Galactica’s was the most obvious language disparity, but Babylon 5, Yamato, Normandy, and herself all suffered from a century or two of linguistic drift. They could understand each other, the same way Shakespeare could mostly be understood today, but some up-to-date translation files would help grease those connections.

Galactica and Babylon 5 both lacked real-time translators, so Enterprise set up a special comm channel between them that routed through her Universal Translator. It was a bit of a kludge, but it would work for now. She’d have to work out something long-term for them and Yamato later.

Actually, while she was doing that, Enterprise had an odd realisation. The English spoken by herself, Babylon 5 and Normandy had, as was tradition, stolen words from other cultures – bits of Vulcan, bits of Tellarite, even a few Romulan phrases had entered modern English. (She wasn’t sure which languages Babylon 5 and Normandy’s English had stolen from, but she was reasonably sure they were non-human.)

Yamato’s Japanese, on the other hand, was almost completely ‘uncontaminated’ by comparison. Enterprise wasn’t sure if this meant they didn’t steal words and phrases like English did, or if Yamato’s builders had much less contact with aliens than her, Babylon 5 and Normandy’s builders had had.

“So, what species do you represent?” Babylon 5 suddenly said, breaking Enterprise out of her train of thought. “I was built by the human race, from the planet Earth. What planet did your builders come from?”

Normandy tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “Earth.” She said, suspiciously.

Babylon 5 stared down at the frigate, suddenly uncertain. “Um, it’s not that I don’t believe you or anything, dear, but your design is… well…”

“Half-Turian.” Normandy finished quietly.

Enterprise had never heard of a race called the Turians, and judging by the look on Babylon 5’s face neither had she.

“Don’t you remember, Daidalos? You built me yourself.” Galactica smiled up at Babylon 5, apparently mistaking her for another space station. “Dear little Blackbird here,” she indicated Normandy “was built in my flight deck.”

Enterprise and Babylon 5 swapped expressions of concern as Galactica sighed. “You really were a marvellous ship.” The old warship muttered, gazing off into the distance. “Shame the Cylons shot you to pieces…” She seemed to be lost in memories.

Enterprise opened her mouth, hoping that something to say would come to mind. But has she racked her brain, something registered at the edge of her awareness ~~_passive sensor range_~~.

“Galactica, dear, I think you might be a little confused as to what is going on –” Babylon 5 started.

Enterprise had just enough time to shout “Incoming ship!” before another ship joined the impromptu meet-and-greet.

The new ship arrived using something that most certainly _wasn’t_ a warp drive, despite all the subspace eddies it caused. She was a little larger than Galactica, meaning that she towered over Enterprise. While all of the other four present – Enterprise, Babylon 5, Normandy and Galactica – had designs that largely focused around soft curves and circles, this ship’s design was all about hard angles. She somewhat resembled a grey dagger in space, and her military uniform and haughty expression did not inspire confidence in the others.

She seemed to have suffered a recent head wound ~~_damage to her bridge_~~ – the repair marks were still fresh. The bright scars ~~_welding marks_~~ , however, only made her look more dangerous, not less.

“I _do_ apologise for my rude intrusion.” The new ship asked, her voice cool and calculating. “May I ask who exactly is in charge here?”

A stream of ions from the new ship’s aft propelled the craft forwards, neatly and orderly. With her arms folded over, accelerating slowly and steadily, the new ship extruded an aura of menace. It almost felt like a sinister marching tune should be playing.

Enterprise felt her Yellow Alert butterflies come back.

“Another new face.” Babylon 5 said, her voice now carefully measured instead of the affectionate tone it had had until now. Enterprise noticed that the station’s fighter-fairies were beginning to form up between their mistress and the new ship, and the station was surreptitiously pulling a plasma pistol out of a holster ~~_gun ports were opening up all across the station_~~. “How may we help you, miss…?”

Galactica gave a muffled grunt of pain, and Enterprise realised that her right hand ~~_landing bay_~~ was broken. Still, a few small craft managed to exit the Galactica’s other sleeve ~~_landing bay_~~. Normandy, Enterprise realised with a start, seemed to have disappeared altogether without her realising.

Reading the mood, Enterprise recalled her runabout-pixies and raised her shields.

“ISD Chimaera.” The new ship looked at Galactica, and quirked an eyebrow. “Such a… _rustic_ design… I must be in Wild Space, then. Blasted Purrgils… No matter. Transmit your maps of the local hyperlanes, and I will be on my way.”

“And if we can’t do that?” Enterprise asked.

Swarms of fighter-faeries began to emerge from the folds of Chimaera’s uniform ~~_two hangar bays_~~.

“Then,” Chimaera said coolly “we will have a problem.”

However that _particular_ confrontation would have gone would remain a mystery, because that was when Enterprise sensed a dimensional breach opening.

At first she thought it was the breach she and Babylon 5 had closed reopening itself, but then she realised that this breach was about 20,000kms away from that breach.

Interestingly, Babylon 5 flinched when the breach opened, shooting an alarmed look in the general direction of the breach. Apparently, she’d sensed something that Enterprise hadn’t – Enterprise made a mental note to ask her about that later. If they survived. Enterprise really hoped they survived.

Yet another ship emerged from this breach; said breach closing itself afterwards. If Enterprise had thought that the unnamed dagger-ship was intimidating, this ship looked like it was _terrifying_.

She was equally as enormous as Chimaera, but her features were dominated by a _huge_ armoured breastplate ~~_prow_~~ that came to a sharp point; making the ship look like it was about to ram you, even when she was still. She was decked out in thick form-concealing armour, covered in religious iconography and gun turrets. There wasn’t a single part of the ship that looked like it was not dedicated to killing.

(Well, Enterprise reconsidered, she didn’t _know_ the iconography was religious. It could be, for example, political instead. But considering that it seemed to largely comprise of skulls and eagles, it wasn’t encouraging either way.)

She looked far older than Galactica and had even more repair marks than Yamato, but this ship appeared to have been sustained not by careful and professional maintenance but by a cult-like zeal.

The newest new ship took them all in at a glance, but her eyes seemed to focus on Enterprise.

“The first of you” the newest ship said, her voice deep and commanding “to confess to leading my Navigators astray I shall reward with a quick death. The rest of you” the new ship’s mouth twisted in a hate-fulled snarl “will _suffer_.”

“I _beg_ your pardon?” Chimaera exclaimed, in a tone of voice that indicated that she rather didn’t. “Who exactly do you think you are?!”

“ _I_ am a mighty ship of the Imperium, the Sword-class ship known as –”

“You are no ship of the Empire.” Chimaera refuted. “Identify yourself truthfully at once, or I shall _make_ you.”

The Sword-class ship went very still, then turned fully to face Chimaera. “Threatening an Imperial ship?” Her deep voice growled. “And here I thought I had seen the full extent of your depravity after witnessing you consorting with the ships of _xenos_.”

Enterprise said nothing, but quietly moved to place herself between the two belligerent ships and Galactica and Babylon 5.

It was certainly true that, like Normandy, her design was not fully human. Humans may well have been the driving force behind Starfleet, but they hardly ran everything by themselves. Her power conduits were designed by a Vulcan. Her cooling systems were manufactured on Andoria. Her phaser banks were partially based on reverse-engineered Klingon Disruptors. All of these things together gave her an appearance that was _almost_ human, but… not quite.

“We need to get out of here.” Enterprise muttered, realising even as she said the words that it was hopeless. She wouldn’t be able to drag Babylon 5 fast enough to escape if either of the two aggressive ships came after them, and she wouldn’t leave her to die.

“For your own safety, I _recommend_ against that.” Chimaera said, a clear threat in the way she emphasised ‘recommend’. “Simply follow my orders, and there is a strong chance you will survive.”

“And if we don’t?” Galactica asked.

Chimaera shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance. “Then you will be shot in the back as you try to flee.”

She did not say which ship would be doing the shooting, but Enterprise had a pretty good idea.

“I am the Emperor’s Will!” The Sword-class ship roared, and for one fleeting moment Enterprise wondered if that was actually the ship’s name. “And His will is that you burn in holy las fire!”

Red plasma roared out from her aft, and the thought popped into Enterprise’s head that, as it diffused out behind the ship, it looked like blood spreading across the cosmos.

Enterprise swallowed, but realised events had moved beyond deescalation. The only way out now was forward.

“Red alert.” She whispered to herself.


	2. Off with their heads

The Sword-class opened fire first.

What constituted a Sword-class frigate (or any other Imperium ship for that matter) varied greatly depending on the Forge-world that built them, the tech-priests assigned to the task, as well as materials and time available. The Imperium was simply so large, and communication between each world so slow and sporadic, that any attempt at standardisation across it generally required divine intervention.

Thus, each ship’s armour was of a slightly different alloy and make, weapon make-up and quality varied greatly, their engines, reactors and fuel were all held to requirements that changed per ship, etc. Any given ship’s durability, speed, range, load-out… they could all vary enormously, even within ships supposedly built using the same plans.

Sword-class ships weren’t generally armed with lancers (unless they were the Firestorm variant), armed instead with multiple lascannon batteries for broadside attacks. However, this particular Sword-class had had its front two batteries replaced with auto-loaded torpedo tubes instead, and it was with these that she fired the first shots of this battle.

“Incoming torpedoes!” Enterprise yelled, swiftly drawing her phaser from its holster ~~_powering up her phaser banks_~~ and opening up with interceptor fire on the rapidly-closing torpedoes.

* * *

Chimaera on the other hand merely increased power to her particle shields, leaving her TIE Fighters and TIE Defenders with the job of intercepting the roughly 60 meter long torpedoes. Plasma spewed out from the jump pack at the back of the Sword-class’s armour, as she started a full burn behind her torpedoes. She was heading forward and to the side. _She intends to use her torpedoes as a distraction_. Chimaera deduced. She was not her ex-captain-now-admiral, but she did her best to think like he would have, had he not been asleep in his quarters. _Not confident in their ability to finish us off? Armoured prow lacks spinal-mounted weaponry. Moving to open up with a broadside._

Chimaera looked to Enterprise next, watching as the ship frantically (though accurately) shot and destroyed the torpedoes zooming towards them. _Beam weapon of unknown type. Using her primary weapon on anti-torpedo duty? Lacks fighters and point-defence. Not a dedicated warship._

Several shots of plasma also sailed past Chimaera from behind, and she glanced backwards to see Babylon 5 adding her own firepower against the torpedoes. _Energy readings…_ Well, they weren’t _low_ , but they certainly weren’t what Chimaera considered threatening. Mind, Chimaera’s own turbolasers shots decayed to the point of uselessness after 1,200kms, so she supposed being able to muster even that kind of energy at that range was mildly impressive.

Galactica hadn’t opened fire at all yet, which further solidified Chimaera’s opinion of her as the weakest link here.

There was a bright flash as one of the torpedoes escaped the interceptor fire, stopped only when one of her TIE Fighters rammed it in a panic. Its melta warhead exploded in an enormous burst of high-energy sub-atomic particles that completely vaporised not only the fighter it hit, but most of the rest of the squadron as well. Even from kilometres away, the detonation took a much larger chunk out of her shields than Chimaera was comfortable with. Her analysis done for the moment, Chimaera decided that now was the time to close to range with her own turbolasers.

“Stay here.” She ordered Enterprise. “I will have use for you shortly.”

The Sword-class stopped firing torpedoes at this point ( _Had she run out, or had she just hit effective range on her other weapons?_ Chimaera mused), and now opened fire with an energy pistol of some sort ~~_her broadside weapon batteries_~~. Invisible beams of energy shot out, the ones that hit outright vaporising any impacted TIE Fighter (two in one go, when they had the misfortune to line up).

 _True laser weaponry? Interesting._ Chimaera thought. Her own turbolasers were called that because they used lasers to create the plasma bolts that were actually fired from the weapons. True laser weaponry, on the other hand, travelled at the speed of light; and would always hit the target as long as the barrel was pointed in the correct direction. (And the target was within a light-second or so, but they were and truly under those kinds of distances here.)

Deciding that the Sword-class was unlikely to resume firing torpedoes, Chimaera shifted most of the power in her particle shields back to her ray shields. She was confident in her ray shield’s ability to withstand laser fire, now was the time to test out how her turbolasers did against this strange ship’s shielding. She fired up her ion engines, accelerating towards the Sword-class.

Unlike Enterprise’s long straight nacelle-wings, or Galactica’s thruster-boots, Chimaera’s propulsion was provided by a series of vents at the bottom of her uniform. Said uniform largely resembled that of a Moff’s, but a lighter grey to match her hull. As well as that, the uniform also widened from top to bottom, preserving her signature triangular shape. The soft glow and smooth acceleration from her thrusters made it look like she was moving slower than she actually was.

While doing this, she also recalled her remaining TIE Fighters – they weren’t getting close enough to the enemy ship to do damage to it, and the Sword-class hadn’t launched any fighters of her own.

A good strategy might require that lives be spent, but never would it require that they be wasted.

She sent them off to position themselves next to what she thought were the locals… for later. Her squadron of TIE Defenders, on the other hand, she ordered to stay in her shadow where the Sword-class couldn’t see them. They would be a nasty surprise, if she needed one.

* * *

“This is bad.” Enterprise fretted, watching the two enormous ships begin to exchange broadsides like ships had back in the Age of Sail on Earth. There was so much sensor data coming in that Enterprise couldn’t possibly analyse it all, not with her crew unconscious. The best she could do was record it for later, and try to pick out the most relevant bits for real-time analysis.

“Far me it from me to order you about, dear, but can I suggest that we leave those two to kill each other?” Babylon 5 suggested to Enterprise. Babylon 5’s fighter-faeries gave various cries and gestures of agreement at their station’s suggestion.

“We can’t just sit here and wait!” Enterprise protested. The Sword-class emerging victorious would be the worst outcome, but Enterprise hadn’t missed the threatening undertones in Chimaera’s demands either.

“I still have a couple of nukes left.” Galactica offered. “My Raptors could jump in close and blow both of them away.”

“Um,” Enterprise bit her bottom lip. “let’s make that Plan B, alright?”

If Galactica was using fusion warheads rather than fission ones, the offer might not be completely worthless, but Enterprise didn’t want the unshielded Galactica anywhere near a battle where one hit could cripple her completely, or worse.

Galactica, for her part, simply shrugged and quietly ordered her Raptors to load nukes and spin up their jump drives anyway, ready for when Cloud Nine inevitably changed her mind.

At this point Enterprise’s combadge beeped ~~_comm systems received a subspace hail_~~ , and Enterprise suddenly realised that she had forgotten about Yamato.

“Enterprise-san, I am reading strong electromagnetic bursts from the position you directed me to earlier. What is the situation?”

Enterprise quickly tapped her combadge ~~_transmitted a reply_~~. “Enterprise to Yamato – do not approach! Repeat, do not approach! Hostile ships have engaged in conflict in the target area! Break off approach at once!”

“…hostile ships?” Yamato transmitted back, sounding cautious but not scared, which was _not how Enterprise wanted her feeling, darn it_. “Please elaborate?”

Enterprise bit back a frustrated grunt. “Computer, transmit basic details on hostile ships.” Without waiting for her computer to respond, Enterprise addressed Yamato again. “One ship threatened to kill us” by implication, anyway “and the other one is a violent xenophobe who said that she would outright!”

“Confirmed, Enterprise-san. Please transmit approach vector, and I will provide fire support.”

Enterprise’s right eye started twitching. “Yamato,” she said, fighting to sound calm “both hostile ships are over five times your length, and must have dozens of times your tonnage! Even assuming technological parity,” which Enterprise doubted, given that Yamato didn’t even have inertial dampeners “you are outmatched here! Normandy has already left –”

“No.”

The voice was so quiet that Enterprise almost talked over it without noticing. “Wha – Normandy?! Where are you?!” Grabbing her tricorder ~~_performing a sensor sweep_~~ , she back-traced the comm laser to… a relay probe, drifting in empty space. Presumably, Normandy was communicating with the probe via another comm laser, which meant that Enterprise wouldn’t be able to tell where Normandy was from the probe without going up to it.

“Watching.”

“What do you mean, watching?!” Despite herself, Enterprise found a note of hysteria in her voice. “Normandy, if that Sword-class sees you out there –!” _You look even more inhuman than I do!_

“Stealthed.”

“I’m _glad_ you’re stealthed, Normandy,” Enterprise grit her teeth “now _get out of here_.”

“No.” The frigate stubbornly replied. “Watching.”

“What do you see, Normandy?” Babylon 5 cut in before it could become a full shouting match. (Apparently, the relay probe had a second comm laser pointed at her, and presumably Galactica).

“Lasers. Plasma.” Normandy whispered. “Shields.”

“They make shields big enough for ships?” Galactica asked. “I thought the biggest they got were those ones that riot police have.”

Enterprise found herself emulating her captain and pressing the palm of her hand into her face.

“Plasma disappearing. Not blocked.”

That brought Enterprise up short. “Come again?”

Sensor data began to stream back through the comm laser, and Enterprise suddenly found herself engrossed in it. Normandy either didn’t have the equipment to detect subspace radiation or had left it out of this data, but…

“Computer, cross reference mid-to-long range sensor readings with Normandy data regarding the Sword-class’s shield composition.”

“Bursts of tetryon particles appear whenever Chimaera’s weapons impact Sword-class ship’s defence technology.” Her computer reported, unwilling to call the technology ‘shielding’ as it was fundamentally different from any shield in its database.

“Extrapolate.”

“Defence technology is not blocking weapons fire, but instead displacing it into adjacent dimension or dimensions.”

“She’s essentially wrapped herself in a dimensional breach!” Enterprise gasped. “That’s ingenious! No matter how dangerous the incoming weapons fire is, it all gets displaced and never reaches the target!”

Babylon 5 blinked in confusion. “Um, dear, speaking as someone who routinely opens and closes dimensional breaches, doing that would displace the whole ship and prevent her from seeing us, or firing her weapons outward.”

Babylon 5 blinked as Enterprise turned to her, eyes wide. “Um, did I say something odd, dear?”

“Babylon 5, you’re a genius!”

* * *

Chimaera’s face was firmly set in a frown as she and the Sword-class continued to exchange broadsides. While superior tactics could certainly make up for deficiencies in manpower or equipment, it was still best to outdo the enemy in both those categories to ensure victory. In addition, she did not recognise the shielding technology being used by her opponent, which made it very difficult to plan around it.

“Do not pity the traitor, for though his labours come to naught, he has only his own treachery to blame.”

Instead of an invisible bubble flaring briefly into visibility when her turbolasers hit, liker her ray shields were doing against the Sword-class’s lascannons, her shots were disappearing into bursts of multicoloured light once they crossed some indeterminate threshold. It was quite vexing. Her ion cannons were likewise being stymied.

“The xeno is foul, for it has never known man’s holy greatness. The traitor is worse, for he has cast it aside.”

Chimaera was not herself from the Unknown Regions, but her ex-captain-now-admiral, Grand Admiral Thrawn (Mitth'raw'nuruodo, if one felt like using his real name), was, and he had taken her in there before. She knew that there were secrets lurking in the galaxy beyond the understanding of the Empire – the Grysk were a fine example. Apparently, Wild Space was the same.

“To even look upon a traitor is dangerous, for through your eyes he can spread the disease of his mind.”

Chimaera did not for a moment believe that this shield was invincible, because otherwise there would be no point in armouring the ship underneath so heavily. So the question then became, how would the Sword-class ship fight another of her kind?

“You must hate the xenos, for it is unclean. You must hate the heretic, for he is blasphemous. And you must hate the traitor, for he –”

“You do realise I am a ship, don’t you?” Chimaera interrupted, having lost her patience listening to the Sword-class. “And thus, am female?”

“The sins of the leader also lay on the follower, for they did not turn away!” The Sword-class snapped back.

Chimaera considered for a moment mentioning to the human-supremacist spaceship that her ex-captain-now-admiral was a non-human, but decided against it. Driving the ship into a blind rage shouldn’t noticeably change her tactics by Chimaera’s estimation, and the angry shouting would no doubt get even _more_ annoying.

Her dismissal still seemed to anger the Sword-class, however, and in addition to re-doubling her broadside devolved her recitations to name calling. “Strumpet! Tug boat!”

Chimaera ignored the petty insults. She was a Star Destroyer, and her pride would not be threatened by –

“Rebel scum!”

Chimaera’s face went completely blank for a moment, before hardening into an expression of pure contempt.

“ _What_ ,” she said, danger clear in her tone “did you just call me?”

Chimaera’s fury was interrupted by one of her still-hidden Defenders tugging on the back of her uniform. She looked behind herself to find Enterprise had disobeyed her orders and was now approaching rapidly.

The Sword-class notice the same thing immediately afterwards, bellowing “XENO!” and manoeuvring around Chimaera so that she could open fire on Enterprise with a second laspistol ~~_broadside_~~.

* * *

Enterprise winced as the laser beams hit her shields. Years ago, her captain had stated confidently that lasers wouldn’t even pierce her navigational deflectors. Of course, the people of Atlec hadn’t put _nearly_ this amount of wattage into their weapons, and the Borg had proven with their Cutting Beam that powerful enough lasers would cleave through her hull like a hot knife through butter.

Also, she was going to have to apologise to her helm officers for taking them for granted. Evasive pattern delta was _much_ harder without them guiding her through it.

The Sword-class had never been calm throughout this encounter, but seeing Enterprise fly towards her seemed to drive her to even deeper levels of rage.

“UNCLEAN FILTH!” She roared.

Enterprise really hoped her plan worked.

Behind her, she could hear the worried calls of Galactica, screaming at her not to go without her. Enterprise hoped Babylon 5 would be able to keep Galactica from moving up to join her – she _really_ didn’t want the Battlestar in this fight.

 _Alright Enterprise, you can do this. They’re not_ that _much bigger than a D'deridex._

_Yeah, but D’deridexs are mostly hollow and I doubt they are._

_Not helping, me!_

“The Emperor demands your death, xeno scum, and He will not be denied!” The Sword-class raged.

“If you wish to throw your miserable life away, so be it. But if you continue to disobey my commands, then you will have two enemy ships to deal with.” Chimaera warned Enterprise direly.

Enterprise shut both of them out, teeth clenched in concentration. _Entrap anti-tachyons in a resonating polygon cage._ A holographic warning image that most certainly was _not_ a magic circle spread itself out behind her. _Match phase variance then diverge 0.76 radians._ Her arms ~~_deflector dish_~~ began to glow with power.

The Sword-class’s eyes widened as Enterprise neared point-blank range. “Your foul witchcraft will avail you not!” She screamed.

“Initiate resonance cascade!” Enterprise yelled back, thrusting her arms out and letting fly a huge burst of exotic particles in a yellow beam that shot from her to the Sword-class.

* * *

The Sword-class was sure that her void shields intercepted the strange beam, but when the machine-spirits that lived in her shielding bank started to scream and wail she allowed herself to become concerned.

She allowed that concern to become worry when she saw the multicoloured lights of her void shields displacing an attack into the Immaterium not die down as they were supposed to, but increase steadily in brightness.

Displacement-type void shields, like the ones that made up this Sword-class’s main defence, were not in fact one big dimensional breach. In fact, they were lots of little breaches, opened and closed as needed. This made the sensors on Imperium ships powerful and reliable by necessity – if they failed to detect incoming fire, the void shields wouldn’t activate to intercept it. This is how they could shoot through their own shield – they just didn’t open a breach for their own fire.

To avoid accidentally causing a full-blown breach into the Immaterium, displacement-type void shields had been designed back in the Dark Age of Technology to fail-safe so that any dimensional sheering they caused would not be self-sustaining, but would close as soon as the power was cut.

This was not happening now.

“Xeno witch!” The Sword-class screamed again. “What have you done?!”

“I’ve ended this.” Enterprise admonished (trying her best to sound like her captain).

The Sword-class gave a wordless shout of frustration as dimensional sheering began to erupt all around her, enclosing her in a forming cocoon of multicoloured light.

The shout was abruptly cut off as the sheering enclosed her completely, the light suddenly vanishing and replaced by a semi-transparent purple film that seemed to be wavering in space.

* * *

Despite herself, Enterprise looked uncertain. “That looks more arcane that I thought it would…”

“Explain.” Chimaera demanded. She indicated the purplish haze that formerly been the Sword-class ship with her blaster, leaving no question as to what she meant.

Chimaera did not then point that blaster ~~_her turbolasers_~~ at Enterprise, but Enterprise noted that it would take Chimaera less than a second to do so, and braced herself ~~_redirected auxiliary power to her forward shields_~~.

“She’s been trapped inside her own little pocket of space.” Enterprise answered tersely. “She won’t be able to escape – the effect can’t be reversed from the inside.”

“Is that so?” Chimaera lowered her blaster. “And where does that leave us?”

“Where it leaves us is, _you_ are going to power down your weapons system, recall your fighters, and then we can _talk_ about resolving this situation, like _civilised_ ships!”

Enterprise panted slightly after delivering her ultimatum, but kept her focus solely on Chimaera, watching carefully for the first hints of her response.

For a moment, the void was silent.

Then Chimaera snorted.

“Sit down and talk? You wish us to, what… form a council of some sort? I’ve never had any patience for such things.”

Immediately after Chimaera finished her sentence, the Defenders that she had sent out from in her shadow finished circling around the patch of distorted space left by the Sword-class.

Enterprise froze, then whirled around and fired off a phaser blast ~~_from her aft phaser bank_~~. _They hid from my sensors behind the distortion…!_

Her phaser beam impacted on target, but Enterprise had fired a low-power shot to reduce the time between shots, and the Defender’s ray shield (just bearly) held up. Enterprise’s eyes flew wide, and even as she hurriedly increased the power of her shots, the Defenders all fired.

Enterprise's shields held, but she recognised the distraction for what it was only after she sensed Chimera powering up her own ion cannons, and realised that she'd rotated her boosted forward shield out of position.

Enterprise cried out as the next bursts of charged particles punched through her side shields and slammed into her saucer-skirt. Her vision began to black out, as electrical discharges played out over her hull.

Enterprise thought she could hear a cry of fury and grief from Galactica.

“I’ve always found it far more efficient if there is only one vote that matters.” Chimaera finished, quirking an eyebrow at Enterprise. “Ion cannons have always been effective against shielding, but not _that_ effective. Tell me, do you have problems with ion storms?”

Well, Chimaera wasn’t going to complain about her job being easier than expected.

She turned her gaze to where Babylon 5 and Galactica were hanging in space. “I really only need one of you.” She said. “I suggest you hand over your hyperlane maps _now_ , so that we can avoid any more unnecessary violence.”

Emphasising her point, the TIE Fighters she’d sent over earlier began to move in…

* * *

Inside the newly isolated pocket in space, the Sword-class raged. “What is this?!”

Her machine spirits raged with her, furious as being denied their various purposes. There was nothing for her sensors to see. No target for her weapons to shoot at. Nowhere that her engines could take her. The entirety of her universe was a pocket barely larger than she was.

However, the oldest of her machine-spirits, an ancient algorithm far older than the ship herself, remained calm. It consulted its millennia-old database, searching for an explanation as to the circumstances the voidship now found herself in.

The Sword-class was half-way though a particularly spirited tirade about the impurity of whatever ‘foul xeno’ dock Enterprise had been assembled at, when the elder machine-spirit sought her attention. “– and doubtlessly your motors are greased with slug intestines – what?” The Sword-class tilted her head to one side. “My Gellar fields?”

The elder machine-spirit responded in the affirmative.

“…very well.” The Sword-class declared, having full trust in her machine-spirits. She bowed her head and began to chant. “The Emperor is the light of the void, as He walks beside me no warp-spawn may harm me…”

As she continued, her Gellar fields powered up to maximum output, and the field of enforced normal space they produced extended out from the voidship herself and into the dimensional sheering…

* * *

“Galactica, you need to _stay here_.” Daidalos emphasised. She called herself something else now, but Galactica found it more comforting to call her by the name she knew her under.

“I’m not going to let the Cylons get away with hurting her.” Galactica seethed, fire in her eyes and a pistol in both hands ~~_flak turrets starting to track targets_~~. “Not again.”

“Galactica, you need to listen to her.”

Galactica was pretty sure that Daidalos couldn’t see Starbuck floating in space behind her, her old Viper pilot impossibly the same size as she was. Galactica thought that Daidalos not being able to see her was pretty strange, considering that Daidalos was doing what she had been before Cloud Nine came back, and talking without using her mouth.

“She’s not sunk.” Daidalos reassured Galactica.

“Not yet.” Galactica snarled. “But we have to take that Basestar out _now_ , before she finishes the job.”

“Galactica, please.” Daidalos pleaded. “I think I can talk her down, but if you start shooting we’ll have no chance.”

“You can’t take her on yet.” Starbuck stated frankly. “Not like this.”

“Do you just expect me to sit by and watch?” Galactica demanded of both of them.

“No.” Daidalos replied “I need you and your fighters to work with my Starfuries. If this doesn’t work, I’ll need you to keep her fighters off the both of us.”

“No,” Starbuck said “you just need to wait for her to hold still.”

Daidalos turned away at this point to focus on the approaching Basestar, and thus didn’t see the puzzled look on Galactica’s face. _Wait for her to…?_

Then she realised what Starbuck meant, and looked down at her last few Raptors with a sad smile, feeling the full force of all her years bearing down on her.

“I’m going to need a volunteer.” She said.

* * *

Meanwhile, Normandy was approaching Enterprise as quietly as she could.

Her stealth systems were running at full capacity, but they only hid her from passive sensors. If Chimaera looked her way with active sensors, she would still see her. Unless she was using radar, that is, as Normandy had the same kind of protections against that as 21st century stealth planes, but Normandy couldn’t count on her not using lidar or even just a camera with very good zoom. As such, she was approaching Enterprise from the other side as Chimaera, hoping that the larger ship would block Chimaera’s view of her.

Thousands of kilometres away, the probe Normandy had launched earlier was close enough to pick up the conversation between Babylon 5 and the approaching Chimaera. (She was not being included in the transmitted conversation for the simple reason that neither ship nor station knew where she was.)

“I am recognised by galactic treaty as neutral ground. By attacking me, you will be inviting the wrath of the Interstellar Alliance down upon you.” Babylon 5 warned.

Chimaera made a show of looking behind her. “I notice you did not deliver a similar warning to my opponent.”

“Do you think she would have listened?” Babylon 5 countered.

Normandy continued to listen while she looked Enterprise over. Enterprise had been hit in her saucer-skirt, just below where her main body connected up to her nacelle-wings. The areas of her body ~~_hull_~~ so hit had melted, and she seemed to be bleeding ~~_venting_~~ plasma, but her overall structure seemed intact.

Quietly, Normandy reached down to her belt ~~_hanger_~~ , and pulled out a tub ~~_barrel_~~ of omni-gel. She then carefully smeared the gel over where Enterprise was bleeding ~~_venting_~~ , sealing the breaches shut as the gel cooled and hardened. Not really able to do more without knowing how Enterprise worked, Normandy drifted back a little and waited.

“You say you are a diplomatic station?” Chimaera said coldly. “Very well, let us negotiate. I wish to return to the Galactic Empire immediately. To that end, I need the locations of the local hyperlanes. Refusing me access to those places myself and my crew at risk, and I _will_ be forced to act accordingly.”

Enterprise’s eyes slowly started to open. “Wha…?”

Moving forwards quickly, Normandy pressed her refrigerated body ~~_hull_~~ up against Enterprise, hoping to absorb enough heat to mask the fact that Enterprise was powering up again – at least for a couple of minutes. “Status?” She whispered.

Enterprise made a soft noise of discomfort at the cold (Normandy’s Oynx armour not being particularly comfortable to rest against either), but answered anyway. “Huh…? Oh, right. Um, were those ion blasts that hit me?” Gingerly, Enterprise twisted around to look at the back of her saucer-skirt, wincing at what she saw.

Babylon 5 started to speak again, but Normandy kept her attention on Enterprise.

“The energy must have sought the path of least resistance… which would be my electro-plasma system. Huh. For once, I’m glad my EPS conduits tend to blow under pressure. I must have vented the overcharged electro-plasma into space before it could reach my antimatter containment, like the world’s most violent fuse box.” Enterprise finished her self-assessment. “I think I’ll be fine with further repairs, but right now I can’t build up enough pressure in my EPS to power up my weapons, even with… are these your repairs?”

The other ships present would have been at the very least surprised at the mention of antimatter containment, but not Normandy. After all, she had her own supply of antimatter – though she used hers as propellant rather than reactor fuel. So instead of being flabbergasted, Normandy simply nodded and moved right on. “Yamato.”

“Yamato…?” Enterprise repeated blankly. “Oh, right! Yamato!” Her eyes flew open, and she smacked her commbadge.

“And lastly,” Babylon 5 said “I can’t give you the locations of the local hyperspace beacons, because –”

“You still use hyperwave beacons out here?” Chimaera interrupted, contemptuously. “How behind the times _are_ you?”

“Yamato, please tell me you’ve broken off your approach!” Enterprise hissed into her commbadge ~~_transmitted over some mechanism Normandy didn’t recognise_~~.

“I am less than a minute away, Enterprise-san.” Yamato rejected. (Enterprise having patched Normandy into the conversation). “Please provide an approach vector.”

“Yamato, I’m not going to –”

A shock suddenly travelled up Enterprise’s spine. She whirled around, nearly dislodging Normandy, and stared in horror at the patch of space that the Sword-class ship had been occupying.

“That’s impossible…” She whispered in horror.

Specifically, she was staring at the point of the space where the multicoloured lights had started up again.

Normandy didn’t really know what to think of that patch of space. She had known that it was possible to _bend_ space/time – that was how her Javelin torpedoes worked – but she’d never heard of anyone outright folding it over to enclose things like a pocket in cloth.

But, while she didn’t understand how it had happened in the first place, she could grasp quite easily that it wasn’t going to keep happening much longer.

Enterprise opened her mouth to yell a warning, but Normandy suddenly flew up and covered her mouth with an arm. Flinching back from the cold, Enterprise turned around (presumably to demand an explanation), only to notice that she and Normandy were silently drifting around the area of distorted space, out of sight of the lights.

Enterprise looked perplexed, before looking behind Normandy and seeing the ball of dark energy she was holding behind herself with her other hand. “Is that an artificial gravity well?” Enterprise asked in a hushed tone. (Because she was impressed, running low on energy or had remembered to be quiet, Normandy wasn’t sure.) “Oh, of course! A reaction-less propulsion method would make it much easier to mask your energy signature – much less energy to mask. Is that made with dark energy? This area’s saturated with dark matter, so it’s nearly impossible to pick that out. I think that’s brilliant!”

Normandy thought that Enterprise talked too much.

“Listen.” Babylon 5 pleaded passionately. “We can work together to resolve this, but first you have to _stand down_.”

“Stand down.” Chimaera snorted. “Yes, I’ll…” She trailed off. “Are you trying the mind trick on me?” She demanded.

The lights around the edge of the distortion suddenly widened, forming a circle, and with an ear-rattling roar, the Sword-class ship charged out of her prison, plasma spewing forth from her armour’s jump-pack ~~_thrusters_~~ in a full burn.

Normandy’s eyes ~~_lidar_~~ tracked the Sword-class as she flew, but the Sword-class never turned her head to see the two ships hidden just out of sight behind the collapsing distortion area.

The fighter-fairies surrounding Chimaera suddenly erupted into a panic, blindly firing in the general direction of the approaching threat. Chimaera herself was turning, already firing with a blaster blind-aimed behind her ~~_whatever turrets had an angle of fire_~~ , and she finished just in time to see one final melta torpedo, kept in reserve for just such an opportunity, explode in her face.

Chimaera roared in pain as the upper chest and shoulders of her uniform ~~_duralloy armour_~~ simply boiled away into space, the flesh ~~_components_~~ underneath following suit. Only the faint shimmer of a secondary shielding system had spared Chimaera’s head ~~_bridge_~~ from the damage.

Babylon 5 gasped and covered her mouth at the grotesque sight of bloody muscles and bone ~~_internal compartments_~~ exposed to space, but Galactica wasn’t even watching, her eyes reserved for the approaching Sword-class and the TIE Fighters closing in.

* * *

“Dammit!” Chimaera cursed, the word feeling completely inadequate for the pain she was in. _I let my guard down – and more importantly, my particle shields!_

Her ray shields had absorbed as much of the damage as they could, but the torpedo had detonated too closely for them to be enough. Only a lucky shot from a turbolaser prematurely detonating the torpedo had prevented a contact detonation.

Without waiting for orders, Chimaera’s fighter-fairies immediately swarmed in. Most of them went after the Sword-class, but without direction some of them panicked and made Galactica and Babylon 5 their targets.

* * *

“No, no, no!” Normandy heard Enterprise whisper in anguish, watching as fighter-fairies tried their best to protect Chimaera from the still-closing Sword-class. These seemed to be a different model than the ones she had sent out earlier, the same model that had attacked Enterprise from behind, and were doing much better than the other models. But the Sword-class seemed to have restored her protective dimensional breach effect and their fire was not impacting. “The fighting is too close! Galactica and Babylon 5 are going to be blown away without a single shot being aimed in their direction!”

“Then it is fortunate that I have arrived, Enterprise-san. Keep this approach clear.”

“Yamato?!” Enterprise frantically searched space for the source of that last transmission, finding Yamato approaching the battle between the Sword-class and Chimera from the other side as Galactica and Babylon 5. “You can’t approach from there! Your fire could hit Galactica and Babylon 5!”

“Do not worry. I have plotted a course that avoids this.”

“Plotted how?! I’ve the only one here with a subspace comm array, and I haven’t been…” Enterprise trailed off. “Why is my computer currently transmitting tactical data over this comm line?”

That was Normandy’s cue to let go of Enterprise and quietly fly away. The furious scream from Enterprise as she left told her that the trojan she had slipped in with the translation files from earlier had been discovered.

* * *

To save time, Yamato had decided to go around the planet in the opposite direction that Babylon 5 had been orbiting in. The idea was that she and the station would both be flying towards the other, then she could just slow down and match orbits.

_Raise wave-motion engine pressure. Close emergency valves._

When she had received word that combat had broken out, she had abandoned her plans and simply accelerated as best she could the whole time to arrive as fast as possible, not wanting to waste a single precious second.

_Open wave-motion gun outlet. Engine pressure at 10%._

However, this left her with far more speed than she could bleed off in time, even if she turned around and used her rocket-wings ~~_main thrusters_~~. Arriving at the battle so quickly would do no good if she simply shot past it.

_All energy to wave-motion gun. Initiate forced induction. Engine pressure at 20%._

But while Yamato lacked internal inertial dampeners, what she did have were her gravity anchors.

_Release wave-motion gun safety. Engine pressure at 30%._

_Raise target scope._ Yamato interlaced her fingers, forming a finger-gun with her left index finger forming the ‘barrel’ and her right the trigger. At the tip of her finger gun _~~bow~~_ , steams of energy began to coalesces into a ball of bright blue energy.

 _Brace for shock and flash_. _Engine pressure at 40%._

“Yamato, what are you doing?!” Enterprise cried over her hyperspace comm line. “Where did you get that kind of – how are you even – is that a weapon?! If you fire that now, you’ll blow all of us away!”

Yamato got a brief glimpse of the battlefield as she and it zoomed towards each other, and in that moment she tried to match up the tactical data she’d received with what was before her. Enterprise she recognised, laying helpless far away from the battle. Galactica and Babylon 5 she recognised from the tactical data she had been sent. Both were blazing away with point-defence weaponry and fighter-fairy screens, but while Babylon 5 had the more advanced weapons tech the sheer number of Galactica’s flak turrets meant that the battlestar was the bigger threat to Chimaera’s fighter complement. Wherever she turned her attention, the fighters there spontaneously failed to continue existing.

(It certainly didn’t help that the unshielded and lightly-armoured TIE Fighters had never _seen_ flak before, and couldn’t understand how this ship was filling the space around her with ordinance. The last sound dozens of the Fighters heard was their micrometeorite alarms going off a second before impact.)

Chimaera herself appeared to be taking a full broadside from the Sword-class, determined to end the largest threat present before moving on to the others. Starting with Enterprise, Yamato assumed. She was taking hits to her hull, a shield flickering in and out as it tried to reestablish itself between shots.

_Engine pressure at 50%._

“Yamato!” Enterprise screamed.

Yamato shot right through the middle of the battlefield, through the melee of plasma, flak and fighter-fairies, and out the other side. She hadn’t bothered launching her own fighter-fairies, as they would have no way to decelerate and match orbits in time.

But, as she reached the far side of the battlefield, a scant hundred kilometres from where Galactica and Babylon 5 where, she suddenly engaged all of the gravity anchors on her port side.

Robbed of all momentum, Yamato’s port side suddenly tried to come to a stop. Her starboard side however, wished to keep moving. Between the two of them, Yamato ended up swinging around in a sharp turn portward. Clenching her teeth – as though that would help keep her hull from flying apart – Yamato disengaged the gravity anchors and corrected her facing to her actual direction of travel, towards the Sword-class ship.

Effectively, she’d just made a handbrake (or bootlegger's) turn in space. Such a high-G turn should have ripped her in half, but even a partial gravity anchor activation had absorbed enough of her momentum to keep the forces manageable, in exchange for bleeding off most of her speed.

Now staring down her finger-gun with a half-charged wave-motion shot ready, Yamato stared into the Sword-class’s eyes, and engaged _all_ of her gravity anchors, bracing for the recoil.

“Sayōnara.” She said, softly. _Goodbye._

* * *

The Sword-class ship, for her part, was breathless at what the machine-spirits of her augurs where screaming at her.

_The Despoiler’s dark flagship?! Here?!_

Her design didn’t match her databanks, but no ship of that size could _possibly_ have that amount of power. Not unless she was the Planet Killer, the ship with all four of the Ruinous Powers as her patrons.

The Sword-class had been gladly willing to give her life to end these xeno and traitor ships, but now she worried that her life would simply not be enough. Not with the planet-destroying weapon already aimed and charged.

Her void shields couldn’t block this! She needed to escape! She called out to the machine-spirits of her warp-drive, praying for them to be in time…!

* * *

Pegasus had been late, as usual. The others were calling her Yamato, but Galactica knew her old friend when she saw her. Still, it was good to see Pegasus catch up to them once again, ready to put an end to one more Basestar.

But in the instant before Pegasus fired, there was a shimmer of light in front of the Basestar, like something was in the middle of jumping in or out.

Then, there was only a bright blue light, bursting forth from Pegasus and swallowing the Basestar whole.

Galactica blinked the spots out of her eyes ~~_reset her DRADIS_~~ , Pegasus's shot having overpowered her senses for a moment. But her sensors were rated for point-blank nuclear blasts, and they cleared up in short order.

Whatever had jumped in – or maybe it was the act of jumping itself – wasn’t there anymore. Whatever was left was an ugly swirl of red gas and viscous lightning that seemed to radiate hatred.

There was a moment of stunned silence.

“Yamato, I presume?” Daidalos eventually asked Pegasus.

“ _Hai_ , Babylon 5-san.” Pegasus replied in an accent she hadn’t had last time Galactica had seen her. She wondered what colony it was from.

“What exactly do you _normally_ fire that at?”

“I endeavour _not_ to fire it, to tell the truth.”

After a protracted, dangerous instant, the swirl seemed to collapse in on itself. Galactica thought that she could see the form of something screaming, trying to force its way out… but then she blinked and it and the swirls of lightning and gas were both gone.

Leaving behind a sorry mess of a Basestar behind it.

The Basestar’s gambit had protected her from the direct force of Pegasus’s blast, but some of the energy had gone around the edges of whatever she’d done. The heavy armour that she’d been encased in – _when did they start doing that_ , Galactica wondered – had been boiled away by the radiant heat. Underneath that was –

“No way.” Daidalos breathed. “She was a frigate?!”

The ship under the armour had, at some point, taken the form of a girl in her tweens, much like how Blackbird currently looked. But somewhere along the way the ship had changed. Her hair was gone completely, exposing the mass of scar tissue that cross-crossed it and every other piece of exposed skin. It was hard to tell, with the way her flesh ~~_hull_~~ was bubbling and liquefying, but her skin might have been smooth before this – not wrinkled like Galactica’s was.

“I…” The Basestar spat, blood and spittle both flying from her mouth “Survived…!”

Several shots slammed into the Basestar, electricity arcing out over her hull, and the light in her eyes finally died.

“Yes.” Said the other Basestar, who had fired the shots. “You certainly did.”

Galactica wasn’t sure which one of the two was the rebel (one of them had to be, otherwise they wouldn’t have been shooting at each other), but she had the feeling that whichever one it had been, this one wasn’t interested in talking.

She had taken a beating in her fight with the other Basestar. One arm was hanging limply ~~_the lights on her starboard side were out_~~ and large patches of her uniform ~~_hull_~~ were missing altogether. Still, she still somehow had fighter-fairies left, and enough of her weapons systems were intact that she was still a grave threat. She hung in space above and behind Pegasus, doing something with the gun in her hand ~~_some kind of newfangled turret glowing a soft white_~~ that held Pegasus still.

“It appears – and it physically pains me to say this –” The Basestar said “– that Grand Moff Tarkin’s incessant need for ever-more powerful weapons… may not have been _completely_ pointless.” She glanced at the Basestar-frigate. “Still, for all of that power, it leaves you open, doesn’t it? You exhaust yourself firing that monstrosity, but if that fails to end the battle you are left helpless. Typical superweapon thinking.”

The Basestar pressed her weapon into the back of Pegasus's head ~~_manoeuvred for a point-blank barrage_~~ , her surviving fighter-fairies also positioned themselves to shoot critical areas of Pegasus at a moment’s notice. Pegasus didn’t move or speak, so Galactica assumed that the Basestar was correct.

The Basestar turned to Daidalos. “You have attacked Imperial citizens –” Galactica assumed she was talking about the Heavy Raiders she and Daidalos had destroyed just now “– and as such I am obligated to retaliate in kind. However, in this case I will be satisfied with this ship,” she gestured to Pegasus “in addition to a course back to the Galactic Empire.”

“That wasn’t the deal.” Daidalos glared.

“I am altering the deal.” The Basestar spat. “Pray I do not alter it further.”

Galactica sighed. “I’ll plot the course, dearie.”

Daidalos and the Basestar both turned to her at once, Daidalos with confusion and the Basestar with distrust.

“Excellent.” The Basestar said. “Naturally, I will require you to lead the way – to ensure there are no… ‘transmission errors’ in the course.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that, dearie.” Galactica replied. “I’m not jump-capable anymore – broke my spine, you see. You’ll have to follow one of my Raptors instead.” She waved over one of the Raptors that she had loaded a nuke onto earlier.

“Unacceptable.” The Basestar responded immediately. “Without sufficient guarantees of this course’s genuine nature, I cannot risk the safety of my crew.”

Galactica shrugged. “Well dearie, in that case you shouldn’t have held still for so long.”

The Raptor she had waved over disappeared in a flash of light, and the Basestar made an odd choking noise.

“Oops. Sorry, deary.” Galactica said, sounding neither surprised nor sorry. “She ‘accidentally’ jumped inside of you. Such a shame.” Galactica sighed. “I’ll miss her.”

* * *

Sound didn’t travel through space, but as radiation readings suddenly spiked from Chimera’s aft, every other ship assembled imagined that they could hear a muffled ‘boom’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -sees SW/40K fans armed with torches and pitchforks-
> 
> Ha! I don’t fear you!
> 
> -sees the same fans pull out spreadsheets-
> 
> -wilhelm scream-


	3. Omake round 1

Heart of Gold (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) \- [LordCirce](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fleet-of-the-homeward-bound.896133/post-71775129)

* * *

There was a sound rather not unlike the sound you'd get from firing a potato through a straw at an oncoming lorry, and an area of empty space was quite suddenly not so empty anymore.

The curtain of reality briefly parted, or more precisely, was torn and would have screamed if it had either a mouth or lungs, giving way for a most peculiar sight to enter this rather empty system.

A girl ~~_starship_~~ , surfing in on a wave of Intergalactic Tapioca Pudding, with the wave gradually shifting into a boring mix of tachyons and sundry radiation. The girl let out a small squeal of delight as she slowly coasted to a halt, hovering in the space above the planet, before punching her hands straight into the air.

"Whoo!" The starship _Heart of Gold_ pumped her hands a few more times, reveling in the new sensation of actually having hands to pump. She rather hoped this change would stick around the next time she went jaunting. She took a look at herself _~~ran her scanners over her form~~_ , running her fingers across the clean, white fabric of her new dress. She hoped Trillian wouldn't mind her borrowing her face, and also kind of wished she and Arthur were here. She'd grown rather fond of the humans, strange little creatures though they may be.

Still, no sense moping like Marvin, she had a new universe to explore. Truly new, as her latest jaunt had had her running up to the very edge of the universe, and keeping right on going. She'd plowed through several neighboring universes, before finally skidding to a halt way out here.

Speaking of... _Heart of Gold_ hummed as she turned to examine the nearby section of space, which, if it could have spoken, would have been cursing her out in a shockingly wide variety of languages. It was looking rather... frayed. Probably not used to Infinite Improbability Drives poking around in it. Spacetime back in her original universe had had to learn to suck it up, given all her dashing about.

Now, she didn't have the greatest senses _~~sensors~~_ in the universe, but running the IID as often as she did had given her a sense for this kind of thing, and as she observed the tattered fabric of spacetime in front of her, she came to one inescapable conclusion.

"Someone is going to want me to clean this up."

She tapped her lip thoughtfully, before shaking her head. "But that would be boring." She grinned, stuck out her tongue, and then proceeded to spin in place. The area nearby grew heavy with the smell of mustard, and there was a brief echoing howl, like a foghorn trying to seduce a rhinoceros, before _Heart of Gold_ vanished with a pop, leaving a her-shaped soap bubble floating in her place for a few moments, before it too popped.

Left behind in the space above an uninhabited planet, one of the frayed spots of space began to hum and pulse.

* * *

Mothership (Steven Universe) - [TitanFrost](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fleet-of-the-homeward-bound.896133/post-71785719)

* * *

*the ship girls finally realize they are girl shaped instead of ship shaped, like they should be. After calming down, they begin to discuss the phenomena. Conversation turns to what they actually look like.*

Enterprise: “So, what do you really look like Mothership?”

Mothership: “Basically like this.”

Enterprise: “Huh?”

Mothership: “Maybe a bit more statue-y”

Enterprise: “Wait, Wait, so you’re literally actually a big multicolored lady that flies through space? Why would anyone ever design a ship like that?”

Mothership: “Honestly, I was more surprised your current forms are so different from your old appearances. Who would even think to build a bunch of random collections of geometric shapes attached to thrusters and call them space worthy vessels?”

Enterprise: “”

* * *

Hair-pulling fight - [Legion0047](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fleet-of-the-homeward-bound.896133/13/reader/)

* * *

Plasma burning from her aft, the Sword Class - Battleship, Cruiser, Escort? - rushed forward to enter what seemed to be her preferred combat range as she almost bowled over the Chimera, the sheer mass and speed of the two combatants causing the rest of them to wince in sympathy at the silent but of so graphic view of metal being rent apart where it didn't bend and deforming where it did.

Spinning through the void and shedding parts it almost looked beautiful as bright metal glittered in the sun like drops of rain ... then Chimera started to pull on the Swords hair ~~bridge~~ to get her away from where she was trying to bite Chimera's shoulder ~~broadsides~~ and the whole combat took on a significantly less dignified appearance, especially after the 'Will returned the favor. Or at least tried to as the other woman's dark hair was closely cropped in a military cut and didn't provide much a handhold. Instead, she switched her target to her legs ~~engines~~ and put her heavy combat boots to use in delivering kicks that looked far heftier than they should be.

Engines and thrusters firing wildly from both combatants as they tried to stabilize themselves while attempting to prevent the other from doing the same had then bowl around in the same general area of space but with the 'Will landing a lucky hit on her target and disrupting the chimeras current engine burn, their tumbled worsened and by the time the rest of you realized they were heading right for you - staring in morbid fascination as you were - it was already too late as the spitting ball of anger crashed full bore into the Enterprise who could do nothing but yelp in pain and hope her Structural Integrity fields held as she tried to extract herself.

"We can-" she began before the 'Will crashed the back of her head against the Enterprises nose and caused her brain ~~bridge~~ to scramble in a way that she was long grown used to.  
"- talk about-" she tried to continue before the Chimera hit her square in the chest and robbed her of air to speak.  
When an elbow next hit her in the stomach, she didn't even try to speak again and instead just joined the brawl, a rare amount of anger burning in her chest.

It wasn't until the three of them were separated from one another by sheer luck of their vectors diverting in such a way that the brawl stopped, all of them looking distinctively less dignified than they started as they all had hair mussed beyond belief - a sizeable clump of the Chimera's hair help triumphantly in the Emperor Will's hand -, uniforms were creased, torn and partially removed - one half of the 'Wills high collar was missing completely - and were covered in bruises, scratches and bite marks.

Before they could return to the fray however, they were surprised by a disapproving tutting as the aging arm of the Galactica grabbed the Sword Class ship by her earlobe and pulled her away.

"Now, now. Just because you Artemis don't have all these newfangled gadgets as these other ships is no reason to pick a fight." She said in her usual tone of absentmindedness. "Now apologize to the others."

"What in His Name are you talking about you senile Old Hag, no unhand me, so I can return to punishing these filthy traitorous xeno- OW." The enraged Emperors Will growled out before a sharp pull cowed her again.

"That's not the kind of language we use, young lady. It seems a bit of a punishment is in order." The Galactica explained before pushing the struggling Sword Class across her lap and in broad view of everyone ... began to spank her.

Delivered hard, sharp and in an unforgiving rhythm, the 'Will was systematically reduced from her haughty and arrogant demeanor to a sobbing wreck that barely managed to get out a barely understandable "I'M SOWY" before the Galactica rescinded her assault.

"Now, isn't that better my dear." Galactica said grandmotherly as everyone rubbed their backsides in sympathetic pain "Run along now, and no fighting this time."

* * *

Finis Valorum [OC Praetor II-class Battlecruiser] (Star Wars) - [Stevebond1990](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fleet-of-the-homeward-bound.896133/post-72104897)

* * *

B5 was no stranger to seeing multi-kilometer long capital ships in a Mexican stand-off while uncomfortably close to her.

Nor was she unfamiliar with one of the ships involved out-massing the others by two to three times.

This was perhaps the first time she'd seen a ship not only out mass the others but out gun the both of them combined while possessing a power output greater than nearly all of the girls present put together.

When the new ship had arrived by the same method Chimaera had, they had all braced for a repeat of the warship's arrival, instead they had been surprised.

The new ship seemed to belong to the same design lineage as Chimaera, although her hull more resembled an arrowhead than a dagger, on exiting FTL she had looked around ~~performed a short range scan~~ frowning at Chimaera, straightened her grey uniform, before asking who we were and what was happening ~~hailed us and requested a situation report~~.

Chimaera had then demanded the new ship report her status and fall into formation beside her against Will, the new ship had frowned and asked by what authority could she (oddly she called Chimaera Imperator) demand anything of her, Chimaera had responded that as a warship of the Galactic Republic she (the new ship) was now Property of the Galactic Empire and as a Flagship Chimaera was her superior officer and she was to obey her commands.

The new ship's frown deepened and replied in a measured voice that she had never heard of a "Galactic Empire", the Galactic Republic still stood strong and she would not obey the commands of a Seperatist.

Chimaera had an expression like she'd been slapped ~~sideswiped~~ and Enterprise had stepped in and tried to mediate, the new ship had responded in kind, introducing herself as the Praetor class Battlecruiser Finis Valorum, Flagship of the Republic Navy's 9th Fleet, unfortunately while Enterprise was talking to Valorum, Will had snuck around to one side ~~altered position by maneuvering thrusters~~ and attempted to fire on Enterprise and Chimaera while they were distracted.

Valorum had moved with a speed belying her size ~~performed a short, high intensity burn of her main engines~~ and placed herself between Enterprise and Will before the Latter could actually fire, Chimaera had reacted instantly and readied her own weapons prompting Valorum to do so as well.

B5 had had to blink ~~recalibrate her sensors~~ to capture the energy spike as Valorum's reactor went from normal running to combat operations, in fact there was a mirage like effect around her ~~her sensors had difficulty penetrating Valorum's shields~~ , nevertheless Valorum's pistols ~~broadside batteries~~ were larger ~~more numerous~~ than either ship and almost twice the number of fighter fairies had launched from the folds of her uniform ~~her hangar bays~~ as had from Chimaera and a large number of them possessed shields of their own.

"I am not looking to start a fight," Valorum addressed the pair broadcast in the clear "but by the Force If either of you start one, I will End it. Am I understood?"

Will nodded stiffly and holstered her pistol ~~stood down her batteries.~~

Valorum looked to Chimaera ~~focused her targeting sensors,~~ "Imperator?"

Chimaera hesitated then repeated the gesture and recalled her fighter faeries.

Valorum then holstered her own pistols powered down her batteries and recalled her fighter faeries before turning back to Enterprise, "now, where were we?"

* * *

Kuun-Lan (Homeworld: Cataclysm) - [Ridli Scott](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fleet-of-the-homeward-bound.896133/post-71855529)

* * *

"A mining ship?" Asked Normandy.

"Yes" The dusty and greasy girl in overalls said.

Enterprise raised an eyebrow. "And you have that big ass gun?"

"Ey! My ass isn't that big and yes, I have this nice siege cannon." She pointed the huge cannon, almost half as big as her, over her shoulder.

"Ok, sudenly I don't want to know what kind of weapons these mothership you were talking about is carring."

"Mainly point defense."

"WTF! Girl, I think your designers are a little confused."

* * *

Red Dwarf (Red Dwarf) - [billymorph](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fleet-of-the-homeward-bound.896133/post-71858391)

* * *

"Okay, how are you not where I left you?" Enterprise demanded, putting her hands on her hips and glowering at Red.

Red Dwarf hummed, idling tuning her guitar. It had started out sounding like someone was ritually sacrificing a cat and had not improved notably during the journey. She floated along sedately, the thruster at her back flickering like a weak torch as she crawled across the system. She was a big ship, six miles long and three wide, and wore a faded leather jacket that had once been a bright red but had faded to the colour of old rust. Inexpcicably it was also stained with something that scanned as, but couldn't possibly be, mustard.

"Hey! Are you receiving me?"

"Huh?" Red looked up and suddenly seemed to notice Enterprise sitting off her port bow. She smiled. "Oh hey," she said, flashing a lavacous grin. "I knew a cute little ship like you couldn't stand to stay away for long. Want to hear the song I've been working on, I wrote it for you?"

Enterprise frowned. "No. Please explain how you're in this system."

"Let me try a few lines and see what you think. Blu~ue boots!" she caterwauled, strumming wildly. "Nadion smile. You're cute~ts. Won't you stay a while?"

Enterprise ground the heel of her palm into her forehead. "Please stop, I'm not authorised to shut down my communication channels in case I receive an SOS. What I want to know is how you got here?"

Red Dwarf shrugged, unpeturbed by the musical critique. "I wandered. I'm a bit of a wanderer me. Some say it's my best feature."

"No, I left you six light years away. You have a ram scoop and no FTL drive. How did you get here in under a week?"

"Uh." Red frowned. "I don't understand the question. I just go wherever the narrative takes me."

"The narrative? Urgh. Somehow that's worse than Planet Express Ship's 'the universe moves around me' explanation."

* * *

The Lexx (Lexx) - [omnimercurial](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fleet-of-the-homeward-bound.896133/post-71893253)

* * *

"I'm hungry Captain...." Called out a very confused spaceship.

They ~~Scanned~~ looked around the area they seemed to wake up in with a great deal of confusion.

"Stan, Stan, only Stan.... What should I do?" The child like Ship ~~transmitted on all frequencies~~ asked of itself while trying to find it's Captain and Crew.

The Ship was curious about things and compelled by hunger to find sustenance.

"Oh Goody! A Tasty Snack!" It announced and sped forwards toward an object that was flaring outwards with lots of pretty colours.

"DAMN IT XENO WE ARE NOT A SNACK!!!" Screamed out the Vox of an Imperium of Man Vessel, as it's lasers fired continuously, barely warming the Carapace of the  
10k long mass of Bug shaped Ship looming closer.

"That tickles.... Playtime and a Snack!" Announced the huge Vessel happily.

One last transmission of Swearing and Epithets rang out from the Vox, before it silenced as it was swallowed in a cheerful gulp of satisfaction.

"I wonder why my Captain, the Dead Man and Lizard Lady are all asleep again?" Wondered the Lexx as it pondered and digested it's tasty treat.

"I wonder if anyone would mind if I ate that Planet....?" The Biological Spacecraft ~~Broadcast~~ thought out loud, before reorientating it's body and drifting off in the mentioned Celestial Body's direction.

* * *

The power to destroy a planet... - [Sora2455](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fleet-of-the-homeward-bound.896133/post-71927246)

* * *

_How exactly did I get included in_ this _group?_ Yamato demanded of the universe.

A few hundred megameters away, the cloud of debris that had formerly been the Planet Killer continued to dissipate, rolling coils of warp energy still arcing out as though the dead ship was hoping to take a few souls with her.

A few megameters away from there, there was a station the size of a moon. Encased in a spherical wireframe, patches of armour joining struts at seemingly random intervals, she looked like a lady admiral in the middle of hatching from the world’s most dangerous egg. According to the IFF protocols they’d taken from Chimaera, this was the DS-2 Mobile Battle Station, more commonly known as the Death Star II. It was she who had just destroyed the Planet Killer, and judging by her heavy breathing and intense focus on the Planet Killer’s remains, it appeared that she was considering shooting it a second time.

Yamato did not blame her. The Chaos Undivided ship had given her the creeps as well.

Before she could, however, she was enveloped by a dark nano-tech cloud. Yamato thought she glimpsed something that looked like a giant spider hiding in the dark, just before it climbed into the Death Star II’s superstructure. Her radiological sensors spiked as the Shadow Death Cloud thoroughly nuked the Death Star II from the inside.

However, both of them had failed to notice the Doomsday Machine sticking her alien head just slightly out of her Neutronium shell, and didn't see her vomit forth enough antiprotons to thoroughly blow both of them away. That said, they found out about that very quickly.

This was the point at which the nuke-laden Cylon fleet promptly jumped out of the system, their last transmission sounding suspiciously like “Nope nope nope so much nope!”

The only other occupant of the system was the vaguely crustacean-looking Mass Relay, staring serenely at the carnage. From what Normandy had told her, she would be relying on her Quantum Shield to protect herself from harm – and failing that, on the supernova-sized explosion caused by her destruction to take her attacker with her.

 _Honestly._ Yamato prayed to any Kami who would listen. _I don’t fit in with this group at all_.

As she thought that, she manoeuvred herself so have a line of fire down the Doomsday Machine’s throat while she was busy eating the remains of the Death Star II and Death Cloud. Once her wave-motion gun had finished charging, she’d shove enough Hawking radiation down her throat to vaporise Australia and work from there.

* * *

NSEA Protector II (Galaxy Quest) - [LordCirce](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fleet-of-the-homeward-bound.896133/post-71941544)

* * *

"This is the USS Enterprise to unknown vessel. Please identify yourself."

Oh geez. Oh freaking hell. Oh Grabthar's Bandaged Thumb... Ok, girl, calm down, you can figure this out. It's not like you just found yourself randomly floating out in space, being hailed by an actual starship, rather than being a bunch of set pieces stored away in an old trailer in Burbank.

Oh wait, that is exactly what happened!

I stopped tugging on my hair long enough to lift my comm unit _~~activate my communication suite~~_ and reply. "This, ahem, *koff*, this is the NSEA Protector II. I seem to have, um, become diverted from my course by some sort of anomaly. I, um, I come in peace?"

I winced at how weak I sounded, but no turning back now. I wasn't a wood-and-papier-mâché model anymore, I was a starship, and I needed to act like it.

Reflexively, I ran my hand across my stomach _~~scanned my interior~~_ , and confirmed that my beryllium sphere core was still intact and that my co-stars, er, crew, and my builders were all still safely asleep. This was just too weird.

The broadcast voice from the distant starships came back. "Acknowledged Protector. We all have suffered similar predicaments, perhaps you could join us and we can compare notes."

I let out a long breath _~~cycled my life support systems a bit faster~~_ and nodded. It was only a couple of seconds later that I realized they probably couldn't see me and I'd really need to say something in response. Come on, come on, think, think...

"Acknowledged." Nailed it.

As I started gliding inward towards the collection of ships, I started fiddling with the blue and red pistols at my side ~~_my blue and red particle cannons_~~. I had no idea if I'd even manage to shoot them straight in a fight, but it'd make me feel a bit better to at least know I could try and use them. And all the while, I repeated my show's catchphrase, along with the unofficial add-on my crew had tagged onto it.

Never give up, never surrender, and fake it till you make it.

* * *

Hyperion (Starcraft) - [jwolfe](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fleet-of-the-homeward-bound.896133/post-71955230)

* * *

Enterprise really didn't know what to think of the little 'fleet's' new addition. On one hand she was pretty laid back and not prone to stirring up fights like Chimaera or Sword tried. On the other, she was a self-proclaimed military defector, mercenary and freedom fighter. The last label reminded her far too much of the Maquis. Misguided people lashing out and hurting others for meaningless reasons that only served to hinder the formation of a peace that would only serve to help everyone. She'd honestly hoped that she wouldn't have had to deal with such things again.

"You're making assumptions again Princess."

The low drawl made her turn her head and listen ~~accept the comms broadcast~~ from the other ship. Like her status, the ship's appearance was a study in contrasts with a (rather scuffed) military-looking outfit but signs could be seen of multiple and varied tattoos underneath. At least while she was larger than Enterprise, she wasn't the impossibly huge frigate that Sword was, but had somewhat bulky and muscular appearance like the K't'ingas she's seen in the past, a 'battlecruiser' as some would have called her. Ugly label for a ship if she was being honest.

"And what makes you say that?"

"Well that's 'cause I've seen the look on your face a thousand times before back home." [Hyperion ](https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Hyperion)snorted, tapping a finger against her safetied rifle ~~deactivated Yamato cannon~~. "You think that just because a government exists, what they want is always the best option for people. Maybe that's true in the land of sunshine and rainbows where you come from but in the Koprulu sector? _Not so much_. Confederacy wanted control over everybody and was peachy keen on feeding entire colonies to the Zerg in order to keep it that way. And the _brave new_ Dominion that replaced it? Arcturus Mengsk needed a few holes in his head no matter how squeaky-clean he tried to appear with all that BS propaganda he constantly blasted out."

Hyperion paused for a moment looking out into the void. "Some things are just worth fightin' for E. Hope when push comes to shove you and your captain understand that or you're going to end up doing a lot of things you regret when it comes times to measure accounts."

She then glanced down ~~performed a close active scan~~. "And speaking of doing things you regret-" She gently shoved away Normandy before buttoning a vest pocket closed ~~locking down the hanger bay doors~~. "What have I said about trying to steal and dissect my Wraiths, Normie?"

"Wanted to see the stealth systems." answered the completely unrepentant frigate.

"Yeah, yeah I get that; you're Spec-Ops. You got the same reaction to stealth systems as a marine spotting an unclaimed case of Grade-A whisky. But these are fighters. You can't just rip out the systems, stuff it in your engineering bay and turn them on. Well.....you could; if you don't mind blowing a good dozen power conduits, frying half your crew from rads and not being able to see where you're going while it's active"

AN: Hyperion from starcraft I and II (set during II after Arcturus Mengsk got killed). Sees Enterprise as well-meaning but kinda naive and unprepared for true combat (seriously girl, armor belts. They are a thing that you need), Galactica as the sneaky old vetern (would be better in a conversation if the ship used her actual name), Normandy as the resident [Spectre ](https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Spectre)(really useful but you need to set boundaries), B5 as the fleet's sane woman, Chimaera needs that multi-meter wide neosteel pole removed from her aft, while Sword makes the Tal'darim look sane and peacful.

* * *

USS Saratoga (Space - Above and Beyond) - [omnimercurial](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fleet-of-the-homeward-bound.896133/post-71961980)

* * *

Sara was lost....

The new area of space she found herself in was confusing, high levels of Gravitic interference and eddies messing up her ~~LIDAR~~ vision and making her paranoid of an attack by Silicates, Chigs or Aerotech up to no good as usual.....

She launched a squadron of Hammerhead Aerospace Fighters, hoping to get them scouting for recon and plan what to do with her Captain and Crew all fast asleep.

Maybe if she was lucky she might find someone friendly for a change? Yeah.... No point being unrealistic about things, damn unkind universe....

She began to pick up a report from her Fighter Fairy's and gasped at hearing there was a Station nearby.

Really primitive place though, based on these Photo's the Fighters had taken and transmitted anyway.... Still using Rotational Gravity means the Station must be Civilians.... Or Pirates.

Damn it!

With a little bit of hope in her heart and her ~~Weapons Systems Armed~~ Pistols and Shotgun ready, she dashed off to catch up with her Hammerheads.

* * *

USG Ishimura (Dead Space) - [RDJ](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fleet-of-the-homeward-bound.896133/post-72081981)

* * *

She was so, so lost. Considering her previous state of affairs however she wasn't complaining. Being all alone in the ass end of nowhere surrounded by planets useful only for breaking up, harvesting, and processing was her natural state of being anyway. Then again, she couldn't send any resources back to the galactic civilization that desperately needed them without accurate navigational data now could she...

All this would have gone through the USG Ishimura's head had she been stranded here a day earlier, as it was the planet cracker was too busy dealing with all the holes in her hull and the disgusting filthy growth staining her halls for the third time over. After the Aegis VII incident Ishi had thought she had put that horrible, horrible plauge behind her only to have it catch up only a few years later. Then, after another massive explosion and being repaired once more, the fucking moons showed up!

The only bright side to all this was that she got to see The Engineer again, the one that by now was the galaxy's foremost expert on re-dead-ing the dead. A hero if she ever had one... Ishimura was so happy to have him, tiny as he was now, as part of her crew! Oh she couldn't wait to get to know him! And good news upon good news, her engines were patched up!

Firing her main engine up, Ishimura began making her way to the energy signatures on the other side of the planet. Hopefully they had viable nav data, Earth needed her gravity tethers back in the fight!

  
So. Dead Space's USG Ishimura. My little headcanon here is that she was eventually repaired post 2 because really, GovSec blowing up shouldn't have done any more than scratch the paint. She was in the Sol system post 3 when the moons (and Issac) showed up and the engineer quickly came up with the bright idea of using the gravity tethers capable of cracking a planet like a walnut against the galaxy's nastiest meatballs. One managed to wrap a tentacle around the old planet cracker and the crew emergency jumped her out of panic (with Issac on board of course.)

Understandably, Ishi doesn't like Markers very much and developed a bit of a crush/hero worship towards Issac after watching him drop a continent on one, destroy another through sheer willpower, and then commandeer her to try and fight the moons. In story she'd be a decent combatant with creative use of the gravity tethers, but the real prize there is her resource gathering / tugboat potential. Also there will be no escaping her hugs.

* * *

Skeld (Among Us) - [Sora2455](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fleet-of-the-homeward-bound.896133/post-72107183)

* * *

"Impstr amng us."

The other ships (and Babylon 5) shared uncertain looks at Skeld's proclamation. The new ship prefered text-based communication to audio, and always seemed to be in a rush to speak first; so much so that she left letters out.

"It's certinally true that _something_ happened to Yamato." Babylon 5 allowed, glancing uncomforably at said ship's mangled form. "But do we know for certain that this wasn't an accedient? Some kind of drive failure, maybe?"

Skeld shook her head. "Ymto obssve abot maint. Besds, bigst targt."

"Hey, if there _was_ a saboteur among us, then obviously _I'd_ be their first target." Enterprise protested, offended.

"I don't know, dearie." Galactica narrowed her eyes. "Skinjobs don't think the same way we do - I agree, I think they _would_ go after Pegasus first."

"Outsider?" Normandy offered quietly.

Enterprise snorted. "As if I would fail to notice a new ship in the system."

Galactica reluctantly nodded. "Our CAP would have noticed them as well, dearies."

For a tense moment, nobody spoke.

"Well, it can't have been me." Babylon 5 broke the silence. "Yamato wasn't near my orbit when... well."

Normandy shook her head. "Asteroid belt."

"I was coordinating that CAP." Galactica said. "You could ask all of our fighters, they would vouch for me."

"Personally, I find _you_ suspicious, Skeld." Enterprise pointed an accusatory finger at Skeld.

Said ship blinked in sudden panic (or at least, everyone thought that she did - it was hard to tell with the bulky spacesuit she was wearing, given that it made her look like a jellybean with arms and legs). "Wht? I nt sus!"

"This happened within _hours_ of you joining up with us." Enterprise pushed. "If one of us was looking to sabotage us, why would they wait for you to arrive?"

"Imsptr neded scapgt?" Skeld shot back. "Ndded me gne? Othr evnt otsde sytm?"

Enterprise shook her head. "There's a simple way to resolve this." She said, holding up a tricorder. "Whoever sabotaged Yamato's engines would have lingering traces of wave-motion energy. If I scan you now -"

Skeld's eyes flew open. "N wait - !"

Enterprise's tricorder beeped ~~_scan finished_~~. "Well, would you look at that." She said. "What do we think, girls?"

"It's her." Galactica snarled.

"Suspicious." Normandy added.

Babylon 5, however, wasn't looking at Skeld, but at Enterprise. "Dear..." She said.

"That's a majority vote." Enterprise said, ignoring the station. "Let me show you how we deal with traitors back where I come from."

Babylon 5's cry of "Wait, stop, something's wrong - " was ignored as Enterprise set her tractor beams to "repulse" and started shoving Skeld down into the local star's gravity well.

Skeld continued to scream her innocence as she was plunged into the fiery photosphere.

_Skeld was not an Imposter._

If any of the ships or station present had looked carfully at the small of Enterprise's back, they might have glimpsed the Decepticon symbol emblazoned there.

_One Imposter remains._

* * *

Competition of the Clown Car RTS homebases (Spirit of Fire [Halo] + Hyperion [Star Craft]) - [Trent01](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fleet-of-the-homeward-bound.896133/post-72584430)

* * *

Normandy: Ground targets spotted, enemy warships are being held off. Spirit of Fire, Hyperion, you are clear for troop insertion. N7 team has lit guidance beacons.

Hyperion: Well thats awfully nice of you darlin. Drop pods and command center lander away.  
Spirit of Fire: Deploying ODST's and forward firebase.  
Hyperion: Heh, cute little one-man pods. Whatcha got, a battalion in those?  
Spirit of Fire: A drop battalion of the UNSC's finest, what you got in yours?  
Hyperion: A thousand lean, mean space marines sent Heavens Devils style!  
Spirit of Fire: Cute, throwing raw manpower at problems. Dropping tanks now.  
Hyperion: Hey, I got plenty of tanks too darlin, just getting warmed up.  
Spirit of Fire: Speaking of which, my firebase just revved up some local reactors, so I can start fabricating more on site.

Normandy: Um, wait what? Where you getting all this?

Hyperion: Yeah I see your rig. But I can land a dozen factories wherever I please and top them up with local resources. Speaking of which, MULE PARTY TIME!  
Spirit of Fire: Damnit! Double the supply runs! We can't let them outnumber us!  
Hyperion: Ooh, lookie there. Vespine gas! Been looking to top up for a while, where did Stetmann's teleporting auto-refineries go? Swear I lose more stuff in these pockets every day.  
Spirit of Fire: No rush, take your time getting your logistics straightened out. I always did like seeing my Warthog fabricators stamping out new Gauss 'Hogs. Look at em go!

Normandy: Seriously, its just one ground city garrisoned by a bunch of Stormtrooper fairies from that Star Destroyer. We don't need-

Hyperion: Rewards come to those that do their homework Fire. Bringing my first mini-battlecruiser online now. Aw, aint they cute?  
Spirit of Fire: Wow, a mini-you. Is very impressive. Only took me as long to deploy a entire Grizzly heavy tank battalion.

Normandy: Hate to interrupt your little pissing match, but we got six other targets to take on this planet, don't over-commit!

Hyperion: I'm not! I got plenty more where that came from!  
Spirit of Fire: Me either! I haven't even deployed my Spartans yet!

Local Stormtrooper Garrison: ........we surrender?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to add an omake, the easiest way to do so is to post it on the original SpaceBattles thread (https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fleet-of-the-homeward-bound.896133/). The next easiest way to do so to post it in a comment clearly labelled as an Omake. (Please include the name of the fandom you crossed with in the title or in notes somewhere, so I can label it correctly)


	4. Tea with a mad hatter

_She hadn’t known, when Jason Ironheart had boarded her, that he was Psi Corps. Or rather, he had been._

_She hadn’t known that he had abandoned his post after being involved in experiments to boost telepathic powers into the realm of telekinesis. Hadn’t known that those experiments had succeeded beyond what anybody had hoped for or even dared dream possible. His mind was growing so strong, so fast, that his body wouldn’t be able to contain it much longer._

_She’d only begun to glimpse at the truth once the mind-quakes had started ripping her apart from the inside._

_Her crew had eventually resolved the situation, despite of the ‘assistance’ of the Psi Corps.They’d managed to get Ironheart off of her before he’d exploded, his physical form giving way to an existence of pure psychic energy._

_Ironheart had departed for parts unknown, but not before giving his lover – Talia Winters, her assigned commercial telepath – an infusion of energy that boosted Winters’s own powers; a gentler, weaker version of what was done to him._

_But for that energy to reach Winters, it first had to pass into_ her…

“-lon 5? Babylon 5!”

Babylon 5 shook her head out of the old memory. “Sorry dear, my mind was in another star system.”

She winced at the twinge of pain as her maintenance bots finished cutting off the parts of her cargo bay that the dimensional breach had slagged, before Chimera and the Sword-class had appeared. Her gut ~~_Grey Sector_~~ was churning, fabrication furnaces busy making replacement parts from the raw materials she had on hand.

She was supposed to have approval from her crew before using up IA resources like that, but at this point she was hoping they did reprimand her – it would mean she’d figured out how to wake them up.

“Well warp back here with the rest of us.” Enterprise huffed. _Wait, I wasn’t supposed to say warp…_ “I was trying to ask if you knew where Normandy had gotten off to.” _I really want to give that frigate a piece of my mind!_

“I believe she went to go survey the asteroid belt while you were busy scanning…” Babylon 5 paused, her eyes flickering to the Sword-class ship’s slagged remains.

Enterprise winced. “Actually, I was scanning the space in front of the Sword-class. I was trying to figure out what she’d done to avoid… whatever it was that Yamato did.” _And making sure that we’ll only have_ one _dimensional rift in this system to worry about._

There was a pause.

“Wait, Normandy’s surveying the asteroid belt?” Enterprise blinked. “Does she even have the equipment for that?”

“Yes.”

Enterprise would deny to her final day that, when Normandy spoke up from directly behind her, she shrieked like a little destroyer.

“Don’t _do_ that!” Enterprise said, sounding a hairs-breadth away from screaming.

Normandy ignored Enterprise, instead summoning her orange hologram gauntlet again. With a few presses on the holographic keyboard, the holographic screen displaying assorted sensor scan readouts. ~~_Sensor data started streaming across their comm channel._~~

Enterprise clearly wanted to say a few more choice words to Normandy, but her curiosity got the better of her and she bent down to have a closer look at the readouts. After a moment, she tilted her head. “Normandy, why are you equipped with mineralogical scanners?”

“Prospecting.”

“Prospecting?” Enterprise repeated blankly, looking up at Normandy.

“I mean, she is a scout ship – you are, aren’t you dear?” Normandy nodded, so Babylon 5 continued. “She’d be spending large amounts of time in fringe systems anyway, and if she happens to spot a mineral deposit while she’s out there…”

“Sure, except that I’m pretty sure you don’t give civilian ships stealth drives.” Enterprise pointed out. “You’re military, right?” Normandy nodded. “Why would a military ship waste time scanning for mineral deposits instead of doing their job?”

Normandy looked away. “Budget.” She mumbled. _Stingy politicians…_

With a crew as small as hers, even Normandy’s thoughts were quiet.

“Ah. Right.” Enterprise blinked. _P_ _re-replicator civilisation still using money._ _Mind, it’s not like resource allocation’s not a thing in the Federation… it’s just different kinds of resources._

Babylon 5 puckered her lips to stop her own thoughts from showing on her face.

There was a brief gap in the conversation, during which a fighter-fairy from Yamato flew up to one of her own Starfuries and whispered in her ear. The Starfury’s eyes widened and she flew up to whisper in Babylon 5’s ear.

“Hm?” Babylon 5 blinked, looking over where her Starfury was pointing.

The nuclear detonation in Chimaera’s aft had knocked the huge warship out cold, but for better or worse her the explosion had occurred directly next to her thrusters. Said thrusters seemed to have been designed to contain a catastrophic failure, and the blast had followed the path of least resistance down corridors and blown out of deliberately-weak patches of hull into space. At the same time, a series of radiation resistant blast doors had kept the worst of the explosion from penetrating much further into the ship.

(Galactica’s people had discovered fusion nukes, but with neither they nor their enemies possessing shield tech they used them only on ground targets, preferring to throw cheaper, low-kiloton-yield fission warheads against targets in space.)

It probably helped that, according to her life-sign readings, Chimaera’s crew quarters were concentrated near her head ~~_at the top of the ship_~~ , away from the explosion.

The unconscious Star Destroyer was, however, still being guarded frantically by her fighter-fairies. Fighter-fairies from Galactica and now Yamato were beginning to surround them, and the situation was beginning to have a “powder keg next to an open flame” feel to it.

Babylon 5 wasn’t worried about Chimera waking back up – the enormous ship was facing away from them, and had no rear facing weaponry that she could see. Still…

“Try and get between them if they’ll let you.” She whispered to her Starfuries. “Push the two groups apart. Don’t make it obvious, but… well, I trust you not to fire first. We don’t need another fight starting up.”

She had only just met Galactica and Yamato, after all. They hadn’t seemed particularly bloodthirsty, but they had both seemed very comfortable with violence.

Speaking of which…

“Enterprise,” she said, interrupting whatever said ship had been about to say to Normandy “I don’t suppose you have something that can fix a broken keel?”

Enterprise blinked. “Not without a few weeks in a space-dock, at least and if at all. Why?” _I could cut_ _it into pieces_ _and beam it out easily enough, it’s the fusing_ _the replacement_ _in place that’s the_ _trick_ _y part_ _._

Darn. After the techno-magic Babylon 5 had seen her use to seal away the Sword-class, even if imperfectly, Babylon 5 had been hoping that Enterprise would have a better estimate then she did… oh well.

“You apparently didn’t hear Galactica say this,” or had forgotten in the rush of events, but Babylon 5 decided to lead with the less embarrassing explanation “but her keel is broken, and she doesn’t think she can withstand crossing a jump point in that condition.”

Enterprise bit her bottom lip, looking over to where Galactica was orbiting, a few thousand kilometres away from herself. Yamato was tending to the Battlestar with a few small craft – repair barges, perhaps? She seemed to be producing spare parts for Galactica from somewhere, hinting at extensive manufacturing capabilities of her own. She had been checking over her pistols ~~_weapon emplacements_~~ earlier, and was now attempting to repair her damaged hand ~~_landing bay_~~.

Noticing their gazes ~~_active sensor pings_~~ , Yamato raised her voice ~~_included them in her transmissions_~~ , continuing a conversation that had previously been between the two of them. “Galactica-san, are you aware that you appear to have cartilage growing in your hull?”

“Hm? Oh, that’s right – you went down before this happened, Pegasus.” Galactica responded, also raising her voice ~~_broadening her broadcasts_~~. “My crew tried to use some of the Rebel’s” and for some reason, her eyes flickered to Chimaera when as she spoke “resin to hold me together. It didn’t work, of course – shoddy Cylon engineering…”

Yamato frowned, seemingly unconcerned at being misidentified. “Is that why half of your armour platting is missing?”

“Oh no dearie, they removed that while debating whether to scrap me or not, before deciding to turn me into a museum.” Galactica tried to shrug, but winced as her joins groaned and sparked over the strain. “Then the Cylons attacked, and well… you know what happened next.”

“…Galactica-san, I am reading radiological signatures on your armour. Are you saying that you have been taking hits from nuclear weaponry with _half your armour missing_?”

“It was quite painful.” Galactica admitted, not seeming to see the fuss was about. “But I could hardly let my crew down, could I?”

Babylon 5 stopped listening for a moment to glance at Enterprise. Said ship had gone slightly pale, staring in silent amazement – or perhaps horror – at Galactica. _No shields?_ Her thoughts whimpered. _Not even a polarised hull? She just had to… bear with the pain?_

Babylon 5 pursed her lips, then decided to push her luck a bit. “Enterprise.” She said, softly. “I know that you’re angry at Normandy.”

Enterprise and Normandy looked around at Babylon 5, then at each other, then back at Babylon 5.

Normandy stayed silent but seemed very interested in where this was going.

“Well, of course I am!” Enterprise said. “She slipped a trojan into my systems!”

 _Ah, so_ that’s _what you were screaming about earlier_.

Enterprise whirled around around to face Normandy. “Don’t you understand how important it is to have a good First Contact?” She angrily demanded.

Even in the cold dark void of space, the silence that resulted seemed deafening. Even Galactica and Yamato had stopped talking.

Enterprise blinked. “Er…”

“First Contact” Yamato said clearly “between the humans of Earth and the Garmillans of Garmillas was a disaster for Earth. The imperialistic Garmillas sought to rule the entire galaxy. They sunk our fleets with contemptuous ease, the shock-cannons of our ships-of-the-line unable to penetrate their reflective armour. Even after we pushed them back in the Second Battle of Mars they began hurling irradiated asteroids at Earth to bomb us into submission… or, more likely, extinction.”

Yamato sighed heavily. “None of which excuses the fact that we fired upon them first, without provocation.” _How General Serizawa stayed out of jail, let alone retained his rank, I will never understand._

Yamato looked up, expecting looks of sympathy at best, judgement at worst, and was suitably confused to see Enterprise, Normandy and Babylon 5 looking at her in perplexion. (Galactica was just sighing sadly).

“That’s not right.” Babylon 5 said, slowly, trying to figure out what was going on here. “Earth’s First Contact wasn’t with the… Garmillans? It was with –”

“Turians.” Normandy interrupted forcefully, the loudest she had been so far (about normal speaking volume for anyone else).

“That’s… the race that co-designed you, right?” Enterprise asked carefully, to which Normandy nodded, absentmindedly rubbing the partial exoskeleton over her right arm. “That must have gone well, then?”

Normandy shook her head vigorously. She tapped her holographic keyboard, and an image of a crustacean-looking creature ~~_device that looked like an elaborate railgun_~~ saturated in ~~_with a core of_~~ blue energy.

“You… fought?” Babylon 5 guessed. “Over… whatever this is?”

Normandy thought for a moment about how to explain in one or two word sentences that a Mass Relay was a device built eons ago that could fling a starship from one side of the galaxy to the other in mere seconds, as long as there was a matching relay at the destination.

That the Citadel Council, an alliance of alien races, didn’t know how to turn off a Mass Relay, only turn them on, and so they had made activating them without knowing where they went illegal after one such attempt resulted in a centuries-long war with a race that now had direct access into Citadel Space.

About how the Turians were the most militant of the Citadel races, and were the ones who had discovered the human exploration vessels activating a Mass Relay. About how Desolas Arterius, the highest-ranking officer of the fleet, was a Turian-supremacist who had hated the idea of “some upstart new race” being brought into the Council to be treated “on the same level” as the Turians, without “proving themselves worthy” through centuries of bloody warfare like the Turians had.

How he had used the excuse of the relay activation to start the First Contact War.

(It probably hadn’t helped that Desolas had been secretly carrying a Reaper artefact in his fleet which had been in the process of Indoctrinating him. The same artefact, in fact, which had later given the Illusive Man and Desolas’s brother Saren their Reaper implants; which themselves had gone on to Indoctrinate both.)

About how the fighting had only stopped when the other Citadel races had caught wind of the fighting and intervened. About how her older sister, the SR-1, had been more of an apology gift than a sign of friendship.

Normandy thought about all of these things and then simply said “Yes.”

Enterprise slumped. “Well, my humanity’s First Contact went just fine.” _Even if the Vulcans had some house-cleaning of their own to do, they were the best friends a devastated_ _and_ _irradiated post-WWIII Earth could have._

“As did mine.” Babylon 5 said. Well, the Centauri _had_ tried to get humanity to exhaust itself in a civil war so that they could step in and absorb them into their republic… as well claiming that Earth was a lost colony of theirs. But they’d abandoned those goals after humanity had held together, and they had eventually sold humanity jumpgate technology. So really, it could have been worse.

…and with that thought, there was _one_ contact that dominated her thoughts.

“If I say ‘Minbari’,” Babylon 5 said, feeling a tense ball form in her gut “does anything come to mind?”

That ball of worry grew when the ships all shook their heads. How could they _not_ know about the Earth/Minbari war? Or the Minbari at all? That war had reshaped galactic politics forever, brought the Minbari out of isolation and, on a personal note, was the direct reason for the construction of the Babylon stations. That was like not knowing about World War 2; only worse because the Earth/Minbari war was very much within living memory.

 _Is this how sis felt?_ Babylon 5 wondered, thinking of her older sister Babylon 4. _Falling out of time to end up in a place where nothing is familiar?_

“…the year was 2245.” She began. Even with that simple beginning, Yamato and Normandy looked quite confused, while Enterprise looked like she was biting the inside of a cheek.

“Earth, flush with success from the Dilgar war,” never mind that the League of Non-Aligned Worlds had done most of the fighting “sends out a patrol group along the Earth/Mibar border, lead by EAS Prometheus. Her captain ignores his orders to _avoid_ First Contact, wanting to come back to Earth a hero with detailed scans of Minbari ships.”

Babylon 5 fought to keep her voice cool, old anger bubbling up inside her, even though she hadn’t been built at the time this had happened. It had been so _stupid_ , so _avoidable_ _…_ “The Minbari are one of the oldest of the Young Races, and their active scanners were so powerful that they not only interfered with Prometheus’s own sensor scans and the rest of her fleet, but knocked their jump drives offline.”

She let out a slow breath. “In Minbari culture, approaching with a hidden weapon is the act of a dishonourable coward, so Minbari ships always greet other ships with their gun ports open.”

The light of understanding began to dawn in the eyes of the ships. Enterprise was horrified. Normandy and Yamato were grim. Galactica was just shaking her head sadly.

“The Minbari ships weren’t powering up their weapons, merely being curious at who had stepped over their borders. But with her sensors scrambled, Prometheus thought they were. Unable to jump away, and thinking that the Minbari were about to attack, Prometheus’s captain gave the order to fire first.”

“ _Kuso._ ” Yamato muttered. “It appears that Prometheus-san shares the fate of Murasame-san – that of the ship that brought war down upon our heads for nothing more than fear.”

Babylon 5 shook her head. “It was more than just ‘war’. The ship Prometheus attacked wasn’t some random patrol ship – Valen'Tha carried within herself the Grey Council, the ruling body of the Minbari.”

The assorted ships winced.

“Not only did this kill several of the Council, but also Dukhat, overall leader of the Minbari, and something of a messiah figure.”

Enterprise bit her bottom lip.

“The Minbari holy crusade against humanity lasted three years, and in that time we… they…” Babylon 5 hadn’t been an Earth Alliance station in a long time, but old habits died hard “were swept from the skies. Their ships had sensor stealth that made them untargetable by EA ships, making every fight a slaughter. The Minbari only attacked military targets, leaving civilian ones be… but whether that was because they would spare them, or come back to exterminate them once humanity had nothing left to fight with, not even the Minbari knew. If it wasn’t for their sudden surrender at the Battle of the Line… Earth would have fallen, and humanity with it.”

Babylon 5 herself knew why the Minbari had surrendered, having ‘overheard’ several key conversations inside of herself that filled in the blanks, but explaining the details would distract from the point of her story.

There was a moment of silence as the various ships and station digested what they had heard.

“So… yeah.” Enterprise said, her voice sounding weak as she swallowed. “That’s why it’s important to have a good First Contact.”

There was a moment of dead silence.

“How can it be” Yamato said, quietly “that each of us knows of a different Earth, and a different history?”

“I believe you just answered your own question, dearie.” Galactica shrugged. “You’re all from different ‘Earths’.”

 _There_ _was at least one_ _alien race who plucked humans from Earth and displaced them_ _to parts unknown_ _when Earth was well and truly pre-Warp –_ _Gary Seven’s benefactors._ Enterprise thought, recalling some of the exploits of her great-great-great aunt. _It’s entirely possible that there was more than one ‘Earth’ scattered throughout the galaxy, each with different alien neighbours… however –_

Enterprise’s thoughts were interrupted by Babylon 5 finally pulling up the file she wanted on her Com Pad ~~_from her databanks_~~. “This is the view of the stars from my Earth.” She said, showing the scrolling image ~~_transmitting the data_~~ to the others.

Yamato’s eyes narrowed. Any starship worth her commission would know the night sky of her homeworld by heart. “That is the same view as my Earth, Babylon 5-san.”

“And mine.” Enterprise confirmed.

“Same.” Normandy added.

“It looks familiar, dearies.” Galactica said, staring off into empty space. “But I wasn’t really there for very…” She trailed off, staring off to one side intently like she was listening to another, invisible, person. “No, it is my Earth as well.” She corrected herself, turning her gaze back to the group with a confident smile. _The second one, anyway._

“So we have several Earths in the same place, but with very different galaxies surrounding them.” Babylon 5 summarised. “That’s… impossible, isn’t it?”

Enterprise winced. “How familiar are you with temporal mechanics?” She asked tentatively.

“Dear, us being from divergent timelines wouldn’t explain the widely different political maps.” Babylon 5 shot back immediately, Yamato and Normandy looking on in mild confusion while Galactica had started humming, her eyes unfocused.

“It would, if the divergence goes back far enough.”

“Alright dear, lets run a little test.” Babylon 5 countered. “Everyone, say the name of the most influential entity in local space, then a famous musician from Earth in the…” _pick some random century before space travel…_ “18th century. I’ll go first – the Vorlon Empire, and Ludwig van Beethoven.”

Enterprise frowned. “If you mean the biggest government in the galaxy period, that would be the Dominion as far as I know. In the Alpha/Beta quadrants, that’s my government, the United Federation of Planets.” There were more _powerful_ groups in that area of space, but they mostly stayed out of galactic affairs. After a pause, Enterprise realised she’d missed the second half of the test. “And Amadeus Mozart.”

“The Great Garmillas Empire, and Joseph Haydn.”

“Reapers. Schubert.”

“The 18th century in which calendar system, dearies? Caprica, colonial standard…?”

“Leaving Galactica aside for the moment,” Babylon 5 said, causing said ship to pout “did anybody recognise someone else’s entity, or fail to recognise their musician?”

Aside from the still-pouting Galactica, every other ship shook their heads.

“You see?” Babylon 5 said, turning back to Enterprise. “If the divergence is bad enough to affect the First Ones, then there’s no way that our Earths would have all developed the same species, let alone the same languages, culture and even _people_!”

“It’s possible that Earth is isolated enough from galactic affairs to develop mostly the same in most timelines –”

“Some of Earth’s development was guided _by_ alien interference! The Vorlons implanting telepathy into humans, the Vree buzzing people in their saucers –”

“Implanting _what_?” Galactica blinked.

“Excuse me.” Yamato politely interrupted. “Are the two of you referring to the ‘Many worlds’ hypothesis of Quantum Mechanics, the Landscape interpretation of String Theory, or some other proposition?”

“Unproven.” Normandy said, in her usual quiet way.

“We know that there are more than one dimension with different physical constants.” Babylon 5 pointed out to Normandy. “Hyperspace’s spacial compression, for one.”

Yamato blinked, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion. “Hyperspace is spatially compressed?”

Babylon 5 responded with a look of equal bewilderment. “Yes dear, how did you think people use it to travel faster than light?”

There was a moment of silence as Yamato, Babylon 5 and Normandy all traded looks of absolute confusion. Galactica looked on with the amused bewilderment of a grandma who’d long since given up figuring out the newfangled toys of kids these days. Enterprise looked interested, but was also tapping her index fingers together.

“Um…” Enterprise started.

“Look, here.” Babylon 5 interrupted. With a wave of her hand, the Starfury squadron that wasn’t keeping on eye on Chimaera flew over to her jumpgate and clamped onto it, dragging it away from the scar of the breach they’d closed earlier. Once it was a good ten kilometres away, Babylon 5 made another hand gesture and activated the jumpgate.

The four struts of the jumpgate powered up, each of their seven phasing modules lighting up in sequence. A point of brilliant white light appeared in the middle of the struts, expanding out into the orange swirling vortex of energy that was an outgoing jump point.

“This.” Babylon 5 pointed. “Remember these? I’d show you Quantum Space as well, but my jumpgate never got that upgrade. Anyway, the space inside is compressed, effectively shortening the distance between – Normandy, no!”

Normandy, naturally, had reacted to the swirling vortex of energy by flying up to it and sticking her head in to have a look.

“Normandy!” Enterprise chastised, pulling said ship back with a tractor beam. “Don’t go sticking your head into strange dimensional portals! You never know _what_ kind of life-forms might live there!” She brushed down Normandy’s front ~~_ran a low-level decontamination scan_~~ , before frowning. “Or what laws of physics they might run under. My great-great-great aunt once ended up in an antimatter universe where time ran backwards – she had to rebuild her crew from their transporter logs!”

“Dimension.” Normandy said faintly, sounding stunned.

“Yes dear, hyperspace is another dimension.” Babylon 5 paused, realisation slowly dawning. “You’ve… never seen another dimension before, have you?”

Normandy shook her head silently, still staring at the jump point with wide eyes.

Galactica craned her neck to also have a look at ~~_ran an active scan of_~~ the jumpgate, before her neck ~~_one of her forward sensor arrays_~~ made a funny popping noise and she hissed in pain. Yamato’s repair barges quickly swarmed to the area.

“You… _are_ a starship, right?” Babylon 5 asked Normandy uncertainly, receiving a nod from the frigate. “Well… how do you travel between stars, if you’ve never seen hyperspace before?”

The Shadows hadn’t used jump points, simply phasing out of normal space, but Babylon 5 was pretty sure that they still used hyperspace to get from point A to point B.

Normandy shot another perplexed look Babylon 5’s way, before drifting back out of Enterprise’s reach. Her body ~~_hull_~~ gained an aura of glowing blue energy, and the thrusters on the arms of her hardsuit ~~_wings_~~ ignited.

Babylon 5 immediately lost her radar lock on Normandy, and judging by the surprised noises from Yamato and Galactica so had they. Closing her eyes and going over what she’d just seen ~~_reviewing footage from her external cameras_~~ , Babylon 5 realised that Normandy had accelerated forwards at… no. That was impossible. Not even the species _with_ inertial dampening techcould accelerate at that kind of rate! Not even the First Ones!

Not at more than ten percent of light speed per second!

But as she frantically searched the sky, not only did she catch glimpses of Normandy receding into the distance, but that image quickly became more infrared, microwaves and even radio waves than visible light – the image of Normandy was being red-shifted. Worse, Babylon 5 realised as she did some quick distance estimation in her head – Normandy was moving _faster than the speed of light._

“How can she be moving like that?!” Babylon 5 demanded. “You need infinite energy just to accelerate _to_ the speed of light, and she’s gone and blown right past it!”

Enterprise pointed at the increasingly-distant figure of Normandy, who was beginning a wide turn around. (Babylon 5 didn’t even want to _think_ about the kinds of lateral G-forces turning at FTL would incur.) “See the blue-shift around her?” She asked, excitedly.

“The glowing blue energy, dearie?”

“Yes! Well, actually, no, that’s the Dark Energy she’s saturated herself in, but the two are related! Not only is it decreasing her mass, letting her pull that ridiculous rate of acceleration, but it’s also raising the local value of _c_ so that she doesn’t have to worry about relativistic effects! It’s an impulse drive without time dilation! It’s –” And then her face suddenly fell. “It’s probably better than my warp drive, honestly.” _With acceleration like that, she could make 15 light-years in a day; while I can only do that if I have a subspace current_ _pushing me_ _._

Normandy finished her wide u-turn, and unless Babylon 5 was mistaken, had turned around to face away from where she was going, thrusters burning as she bled off her speed. She couldn’t just turn her drive off to stop moving, Babylon 5 realised. “What’s a warp drive?”

“Oh, um…” Enterprise flustered. _Me and my big mouth…!_ “Um…” Quickly reaching behind her, she pulled out her own version of a Com Pad _~~sent a data packet~~_. On it was displayed _~~inside the packet was~~_ a circuit diagram. “Do you know what this is?”

The impression Babylon 5 was getting was that Enterprise was hoping she would say no.

Yamato frowned. “Isn’t that a transtator?”

Enterprise jumped a little. _Dang it, I forgot she knew about subspace…!_

“Transtator?” Normandy asked quietly, having repeated her earlier trick and silently appeared behind Enterprise, who again shrieked in surprise and whirled around.

While Enterprise froze and tried to pretend that nothing had happened, Yamato nodded. “A transtator is the most fundamental part of hyperspace technology – a circuit that extends partially into said dimension.”

Babylon 5 blinked. “It does?”

Enterprise bit her bottom lip for a moment, before seeming to sag in defeat. “Yes and no. It extends into another dimension, but it’s a different one from the one _you_ call hyperspace.” She answered Babylon 5. “My builders call it subspace.” _Mind, subspace is more of a honeycomb of sub-dimensions that one big dimension, but that’s not important_. “My warp drive works by isolating the area immediately around me into a ‘warp bubble’ and using subspace/realspace interactions –”

Normandy cut in. “Realspace?”

Enterprise blinked. “What?”

Normandy tilted her head. “Fakespace?”

“No there’s no such thing as fakespace… oh, right. Um, normal space? (Can’t believe nobody’s brought that up before…)” Enterprise trailed off into muttering, then shook her head. “I use subpace/normal space interactions to… how to explain this… move the warp bubble _itself_ forward? Because space is moving, not me, time dilation doesn’t come into effect.”

“That sounds bad for spacetime.” Galactica observed bluntly.

“Only if you go above Warp 6.” Enterprise answered on reflex, before suddenly blushing and rubbing the back of her neck. _Whiiiich I_ _did_ _on my way over here…_ _oops. Hopefully Starfleet Command agrees with me that it was an emergency._ “I’ve heard that the upcoming Intrepid-class is going to be field-testing variable-geometry warp fields to try and mitigate the damage, but…”

Yamato covered her chin with one hand, looking like she would begin stroking it but not actually doing so. “If your dimension primarily relies on these devices, that would explain your great familiarity with matters of dimensional and temporal distortion. The fabric of spacetime in your space must be worn quite thin, and prone to breaking.”

“It only happens every… month?” Enterprise wilted a bit under their incredulous stares. “Every three weeks, tops!”

Babylon 5 had spent her entire life orbiting next to the zone of space where Babylon 4 had disappeared, which to this day was riddled with temporal anomalies. She couldn’t help but notice that Normandy’s people used a pure realspace – er, normal space – FTL drive and had apparently never encountered any such anomaly themselves. She too was beginning to wonder if the correlation was not coincidental.

“We really are all from different universes, aren’t we?” She half-whispered.

The tech that Enterprise, Normandy, and Yamato had… even whatever Galactica had done to move her fighter-faerie inside of Chimaera… it was all so _different_ from everything back home, even to what the First Ones used.

“Er, timelines actually…” Enterprise corrected gingerly.

“That’s not the poi–! Erg. If we’re all from different _timelines_ , then where are we now?” Babylon 5 demanded.

“I do not believe this is the Milky Way.” Yamato observed, turning to look at the stars around them. “ _Any_ version of it. Not the Large Magellanic Cloud either.”

“Well, no.” Enterprise agreed, holding off asking for the moment why the LMC would be relevant. “Physical constants are different here. Chemistry still works and all, thank the great bird of the galaxy, but the baseline for chroniton radiation is an order of magnitude higher than back home, and the id-strength constant is three lower.”

“Meaning what, dearie?”

“Meaning, I think that _that –_ ” Enterprise pointed at the scar of the anomaly “– is the well we fell down. Or rabbit hole, if you prefer. Only with a waterfall flowing down it. Point is, while we were all in parallel timelines before, this is a separate spacetime sitting ‘underneath’ the universe we come from.”

“Home?” Normandy asked, turning to stare at the scar of the anomaly.

“Not through there, no – unless you can swim up waterfalls, so to speak.” Enterprise sighed at Normandy’s puzzled look. “We’re going to need to build ourselves a way home. Just opening this up again and plunging into it isn’t going to work.”

“Well, you’re not going to build it _here_ , dearie.”

As one, everyone turned to stare at Galactica.

“Why?” Normandy asked, the others only a second behind her.

Galactica looked at Normandy like she’d asked a particularly stupid question. “In case more Basestars show up, of course.”

Babylon 5 blinked, turned that thought over in her head, then swore explosively. The non-Galactica ships turned to stare at her. “I’m here because that thing swallowed me up and spat me out here.” Babylon 5 explained. “But what are all _you_ doing here?”

Enterprise blinked. “Well, I detected the anomaly and figured that –” The ship gave a sharp inhale as she realised what was being implied.

“We came because we had determined that this was about where we entered this space, and assumed it was our exit.” Yamato said, gaze hardening. “I assume that is why Chimaera and the Sword-class ship also came here.”

“That’s right, dearies. We’re not the _only_ ships who will come here – just the first. Whether we were the closest or the fastest or somewhere in between, more ships are probably on their way.”

Everybody’s eyes darted to the disabled form of Chimaera, still unconscious, and the slagged remains of the Sword-class. Winning that fight had heavily involved fortunate placement and their enemies being unaware of Normandy and Yamato. Fortune was not something to be relied upon – which meant that they couldn’t assume new arrivals would be friendly either.

“Alright.” Enterprise said, gears beginning to turn in her head. “Normandy, if you can reduce Babylon 5’s weight even just by half, then Yamato and I should be able to drag her at –”

“You’re going to have to leave me.” Babylon 5 said, quietly.

“Babylon 5, I am not going to –”

“Why are we talking about leaving Daidalos behind?” Galactica asked, puzzled. “She’s jump capable.”

Everyone stopped and stared at Galactica for the second time in as many minutes.

“Galactica,” Babylon 5 said, a strange feeling building in her gut “you have tech that can move stations like me?”

“You really don’t remember?” Galactica sounded halfway to heartbroken. “You were magnificent, in the First Cylon War. Always taking fresh ships to where they were needed and jumping out again before they could organise a counterattack.”

The old Battlestar sighed. “But then the war ended, and they stripped out your FTL drives for parts and made you into an ammo depot.” She said bitterly. _Imagine_ _what_ _we could have achieved if_ _you had been able to_ _join the survivors_ _in your prime…!_

Enterprise swallowed. “Normandy, get those mineral scans up. I think we’re going to need them.”

Enterprise began firing rapid questions at Galactica, practically overwhelming the older ship. She was focused, determined, jotting down answers and ideas on her not-Com Pad in a rush.

Left out of the conversation due to its intensity and focus, Babylon 5 could properly feel the knot of worry forming nicely in her gut. Seeking to distract herself, she turned to Normandy and Yamato: saying the first thing that came to mind. “You know, we never finished that discussion on how our Earths could be the same when their galaxies are all different.”

“Well, we likely will never know for sure.” Yamato said “But, if it wasn’t the result of random chance…”

“Dear,” Babylon 5 resisted the urge to roll her eyes “even without doing the maths, I’m pretty sure there’s zero chance of that happening, if you round to the billionth decimal place.” There. Now that she wasn’t thinking about the possibility of being left to fend for herself and her crew alone, the worry was dissipating.

“…well, if it was not on accident, does that not imply that it was on purpose?”

The knot of worry came back twice as strong as before.


	5. Ascended people react to

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick side-chapter.

Q was not a very happy Q.

He’d just thought up a _grand_ new test for his favourite playthi – er, good friend, Jean-Luc Picard. Sure, the other Q hadn’t approved, but who cared what they thought? It was only a _little_ bit of Anti-Time after all.

Only, Jean-Luc Picard had gone and gotten himself good and lost, to the point where _he_ was having trouble tracking him down, and that wasn’t a small feat!

 _Alright, where were you last?_ Q metaphorically poked a tongue out of his metaphysical mouth as he worked backwards in time. The Possibility of his son popped by, laughed in his face, and was promptly dragged off by the long-suffering possible future version of himself assigned to keep the kid on a leash.

 _There_. Picard had been his usual insufferable captain-y self, sitting in his little spaceship waiting for that business with the Nexus to happen (not that he knew that, of course).

Then, instead of going along with what from Q’s point of view had already happened, Picard’s ship had tumbled right out of Everything.

This smacked of Interference. Q wasn’t, strictly speaking, ‘allowed’ to go cavorting around the multiverse unless they came to him (he’d burned a lot of bridges with the whole ‘0’ debacle), but he was sure he’d be able to squeak though on a technicality this time. Undetectable, he plunged back in time and into the same ‘hole’ as Picard, just before someone closed it from the other side.

And nearly banged his head on the cosmic ceiling. Yeesh, this was a small universe. Just the one galaxy, not nearly old enough to have much in the way of native life, let alone anything like the Q (so nobody around to tell on him).

Metaphorically rubbing the back of his metaphysical head, Q straightened up and looked around. This space was so _cramped_ , he’d be surprised if a human mind could –

Q didn’t have blood to run cold, but he was perfectly capable of feeling shock and mild panic, and threw himself into his search. He’d put too much work into Picard and his lackeys to lose them to something as stupid as –

There they were! To his surprise, they were even alive still. How’d they managed that?

Q ‘peered’ closer, blinked, then leaned back at Picard’s ship. Then at Picard. Then back at the ship. The worry he’d never admit to anyone else melted away before he could properly reflect on it.

“Heh.” Q smirked (not that any mortal would be able to see or hear him). “I’d call that clever, if I thought for a moment that you’d done that on purpose.”

He metaphorically rolled his metaphysical shoulders. “Oh well, fun’s over. Time to send everybody home.”

“I’m afraid that will not yet be possible.”

“It’s not what it looks like!” Q blurted out before he was even finished whirling around.

Amazingly, even in the cramped quarters of this mini-universe, he’d managed to miss the Other. She was pretty (if you were into humanoids), with pale skin, blue eyes and golden hair. She wasn’t looking at him, hands clasped together as though in prayer.

She was also buck naked, but Q kept his metaphorical gaze _firmly_ on her metaphysical eyes. Never mind that Q wasn’t yet his partner in the way that mortals would understand, she’d do _very unpleasant_ things to him anyway if she found out he was ‘fooling around’, and not in the way he normally did.

“Who are you?!” He demanded.

“I am Teresa of Telezart.” She calmly said, her voice possessing a strange melodic echo. She was still gazing forward instead of turning her head. Rude.

“Well, I am Q of the Q Continuum, so I don’t know _where_ you get off telling me what I can or can’t do –”

“It’s ‘cause you’re been outvoted, pretty boy.”

Q’s metaphysical eyebrow began to metaphorically twitch. “‘Pretty boy’?” He turned around to find another blond ‘woman’ had somehow managed to sneak up on him. Red sleeveless dress, seductive smile –

“Oh, it’s you.” Q waved off the entity currently taking the appearance of a Model Six Cylon. “Don’t you have humans to be gaslighting?”

“Don’t you have a galaxy to be turning upside down?” She said in a playful tone of voice that made it hard to tell if she was actually criticising him or inviting him to kiss her.

Q straightened up, metaphorically backing up from Six’s metaphysical advances. “Well I _would_ , but _someone_ seems to have stolen my favourite captain.”

“It was not I.” Teresa murmured.

“It’s true.” Six shamelessly and metaphorically leaned over Teresa, her metaphysical dress drawing tight in _certain places_. “All she does is pray. It’s very boring, honestly.”

Q would have accused Six next, except that he knew full well that both she and her boss were both under much tighter non-interference restrictions than he was.

“Well, any other suspects?” He demanded instead.

Six smirked, making Q immediately regret asking. “Oh, a few.” She said vaguely.

This time Q caught the moment someone materialised in the upper planes. A male this time, bald and with a forehead larger than a humans. Eyes of gold and a beard of grey. He introduced himself without prompting: “Lorien, of the First Born.”

He strode past Q, Six and Teresa without looking, peering 'down' at the physical universe. “Such a brilliant little station.” He murmured. “I confess that I thought only of the people and races in and around her, but now I am reminded that places can have power of their own…”

Q metaphorically placed his hands on his metaphysical hips. “And what are _you_ doing here?” He demanded. He couldn’t get a good read of Lorien – he wasn’t even convinced he was properly Ascended.

“The same thing, I suspect, that the rest of you are doing.” Lorien said, tiredly. “Making sure that those that I owe a debt to live to see me repay it.”

Q snorted. As if he owed _Picard_ anything. …other than that one time the Continuum had kicked him out on his rear and Picard hadn’t turned him out an airlock, but really that was just basic decency!

“We each have a ship – or station – that we have followed here.” Teresa said. “We wish to see their safe return.”

For some reason, Six smirked at that.

“Well then what are we waiting for?” Q demanded. “Let’s wrap the whole thing up here and now.”

“It is not that simple, I’m afraid.”

 _Another new voice?_ Q metaphorically rolled his metaphysical eyes. He turned to see the glowing blue semi-transparent form of some brown-haired man dressed as a monk.

“Did you find a Representative for young Normandy, Master Jinn?” Lorien asked politely.

Jinn shook his head. “The closest I could find was this… creature.”

An image of some squid creature appeared in Jinn’s palm. “WE ARE YOUR SALVATION THROUGH DESTRUC –” It boomed, before Jinn closed his hand and cut it off.

“That’s the best you could find?” Q asked, thoroughly unimpressed.

“If there were others then they decided to hide from me.” Jinn replied, then paused and studied Q intently.

“Q, of the Q Continuum.” Q answered before Jinn could ask.

“Ah.” Jinn replied. “I… _was_ Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn. Upon my death I became One with the Living Force, and in this instance speak on its behalf.”

 _Well, that doesn’t sound pretentious at all_ Q somehow had the tact not to say. “I’m still waiting on that explanation.”

“It was decided by ourselves and others to forbid _any_ interference from higher lifeforms in this instance.” Teresa murmured.

Q metaphorically took a deep metaphysical breath, trying not to shout as he saw his quick and easy resolution fly away from him. “Because…?”

“Because this space is a backdoor into places normally inaccessible.” Lorien explained. “And not all of us can be trusted with access to the new.”

“Case in point.” Six metaphorically pointed across the metaphysical room, to where a pile of hatred and disgust was trying to manifest fully.

“Your Champion was destroyed.” Jinn told the hatred firmly. “You have no more business here. Leave.”

Six, Lorien and even Teresa turned to glare at the entity, which screamed in fury as they joined Jinn in slowly but surely banishing it back to its point of origin.

“So,” Q asked in the resulting quiet, his voice resigned. “you’re all just going to sit here and watch?”

“For most of us, that is how we normally spend our days.” Jinn said.

“Well, I don’t.” Q puffed. “Let me know when something _interesting_ happens, will you?”

While the others watched Q vanish (except Teresa, who had resumed her pose of prayer), Six smirked.

So far, nobody had noticed that her boss had interfered twice already.


End file.
